


The Assyrian Tablet Job

by Kat2107



Category: Leverage
Genre: 3+1, Betrayal, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, No cheating, References to War, Thank God Eliot has friends, The world's weirdest love rectangle, Torture, WARNINGS:, but all he wants is peace, his relationship status is complicated, theft of archeological artefacts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-03-20 08:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 63,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: He slammed the shift into gear and floored the gas.The Challenger might have made it.The truck, at least, made it survivable.2+1 makes for one helluva partnership, plus one more makes for one helluva awkward situation.It's not that Eliot regrets finally sleeping with Hardison and Parker.It's not that Quinn is a problem per se...Eliot just hates the situation.The easy solution? Break up with the friends with benefits mercenary.He will never know how Quinn would have reacted because Eliot never arrives.Somewhere between Portland and their meeting point someone waits for the hitter.Someone who knows what they're doing.Now it's up to his partners and his not so clandestine affair to save him.





	1. Well...fuck!

Eliot woke to a warm weight curled against his right side and a steady heartbeat under his outstretched left. He recognized Paker by her scent and the softness of her hair spilling over his chest. He found Hardison when he followed the line of his own arm to where it rested easily on the sleeping hacker’s chest.

Well…fuck. Fuck yes but also… fuck.

5 years, 4 months, a few days. A successful case. A celebratory dinner. And all the things that had festered since Washington and the flu case – or longer - culminated in …this.

Reaching up he brushed back Parker’s fringes to reveal her peacefully sleeping face.

 

It had all started with her, back when they had been hunting Moreau and he had realized that Parker, of all of them, more so even than Nate, had understood why he asked her not ask. And then, in Alaska, he had paid her back. With honesty. The acceptance she had gifted him with.

They were not like Nate, driven by obsessive righteousness. Not like Sophie and her empathy. And absolutely not like Hardison, who, under all the stupid wannabe tough guy exterior, barely managed to hide the softest of hearts.

It had taken years to realize that Parker’s innocence hid a feral creature, hell-bent on survival, like him. A creature he could coax out of its shell, not exactly tame, but get to trust him. And then Washington had happened, the wordless rapport, the intimate knowledge that they would do everything to protect the guy in their middle. That they would give everything to do the right thing. By any means necessary.

Victory. And Parker that carefully curled around his injured body, watched over him as the doctor Hardison had insisted on had properly stitched Eliot up, bandaged him up and ordered him to rest for two days minimum. Painkillers and antibiotics included.

She had insisted on sleeping in his room, his bed. Had pressed a kiss to his cheek and whispered ‘Good night’ and ‘Good job’ and when Hardison had complained, she had waved him into the bed and told him to shut up and let Eliot sleep.

That’s how it had started

Parker curled around Eliot. Hardison curled around Parker.

Parker on the couch, her head resting in Eliot’s lap while she turned over the shifting parts of a con in her clever little head.

Eliot’s hands on Hardison’s shoulders, grounding him while he frantically searched for info, for a way out, for yet another burner identity. Plates of food that appeared on Hardison’s desk in the middle of the night. “Eat that.”

Hardison rubbing his eyes with an exhausted “Thanks, man.”

Parker holding a piece of cracker with cheese to Eliot's lips last night, demanding that he taste that.

“I know how they taste, Parker. I made them.”

His notorious inability to resist her. Her arms around his neck and her lips on his as she bit the other half of the cracker with a gleeful cackle.

A moment of panic, of trying to shove her away, before Hardison’s voice drove it away.

“Daaaaaaayum… this is exactly as hot as I never dared image. Alright, I might’ve imagined. A little. A little _lot._ ”

Parkers fingers digging into Eliot’s hair, holding him in place and then Hardison’s hands, steadying on Eliot’s shoulders. For once not overselling it. Just easy, waiting him out.

Hands. Mouths. More of Parker’s happy cackle and Hardison’s chuckle in Eliot’s ear.

Everything right in his world.

Except for that tiny little detail of a hitter that tended to show up on Eliot’s doorstep like a stray dog, more often than not bruised or bleeding, to let himself inside and crash on Eliot’s couch and later, always waiting for an invitation, the bed.

Looking down, he found an unhappy blue eye under a frown watching him.

“Stop thinking so loud,” she whispered, battering on because she never managed to control her curiosity. “Whatcha thinking about?”

Eliot closed his eyes and sighed. “Quinn.”

“Oh!”

Her excitement quickly faltered in the face of Eliot’s apprehension. “Oh… is there a problem with Boyfriend?”

“He’s not my… Parker, please stop calling Quinn my boyfriend. We are…”

She raised an eyebrow. “You know that we don’t mind, right?”

She may not, Hardison, on the other hand, had been raised on much different moral principles and Quinn… Eliot honestly had no idea what Quinn would do and that was a big problem. That whole thing between them qualified as barely more than a friends with benefits arrangement. Except the benefits had become increasingly regular over the last fifteen months and the friends were two men that excelled at killing others.

Parker was still studying him with her all-knowing gaze, raised eyebrow and crooked smirk, and she looked so much like her grab-what-you-want-and-be-done-with-it-self that it had Eliot grab one of their pillows and pulled it over his head.

Of course, she would be fucking unhelpful in sorting out this mess.

 

~~~

 

By the time they met the client in the pub, she had forgotten about it thankfully.

Jimmy Vaughn, a young ex-Marine that had just gotten his security firm off the ground, employing mostly veterans but keeping them in civilian life as much as possible. Not another PMC trying to fish the pool for those that got a bit of too much of a taste for war. Just guys who maybe couldn’t get the taste out of their mouth enough to go 9-5 in an office.

One of their clients, Wingham Technologies, had tried to screw them over and used them as a scapegoat for a break in and insurance fraud, crashing Vaughns reputation along with the livelihoods of his men.

Luckily, he had found a mentor in someone who dealt in… to be honest, Thomas Marx _did_ fish in the pond with the bad fish. A broker of needed services, bodyguards, PMC, security and the occasional mercenary, all, though, as clean as government work ever got. If he brokered wetwork, he hid it very well.

 

“Spencer!”

Marx pushed away from his seat in the corner, a big grin on his face, hand outstretched as he marched towards Eliot. Vaughn trailed in his wake, a bit like a lost puppy in the middle of a bunch of pitbulls.

There was an awkward moment when Marx had to clumsily shift his way around Hardison to turn towards his younger protegé and open the circle for him, a bad knee and the resulting limp always made him look a  little unbalanced.

But he made up for it with an overboarding personality. Always had. All the way back when he had liaisoned for them in Iraq.

It had been a good year. Next thing he heard, Marx had taken a bullet to the leg and been sent home to be fixed as good as possible and for some reason, Eliot never had kept up with him the way he kept up with the others.

But he had stepped in when Marx had asked for help.

 

“You came through big time, my friend,” he laughed now and Eliot grabbed his hand with the satisfaction that only victory brings.

“You’re welcome, buddy, that’s what we do.”

Nothing worked like the public confession of a conspiracy to commit crime to exonerate the innocent and nail down the guilty.

Vaughn’s reputation, once the right parties got wind of the fact that he helped bring down his ex-client, would skyrocket. And the fact that there was a reward involved from the insurance company (Thanks, Nate) _and_ the proven breach of contract made for a nice little windfall to get his company back on track.

Happy endings for all involved.

Where Marx burst with showmanship these days, Vaughn bled sincerity as he shook Parker’s hand.

“I’m glad that Mr. Marx found us when the trouble started and suggested you. I…” He ran a hand through his short hair. “I’ll be honest with you, I was completely lost.”

Parker polished up her smile and handed him a check that would cover the expenses of the next few weeks, courtesy of a Wingham liability account.

“As Eliot said, that’s what we do.”

 

They stay like this after Vaughn and Marx left, comfortably orbiting around each other in the empty brewpub. Hardison tapped through the news on his tablet, Eliot did some last minute checks to the kitchen and updated today’s grocery list for Hardison and Parker...and Parker was studying him.

“What?”

Her eyes shifted to the clock on the wall and back at him.  

“You have to leave, soon.”

Eliot knew the time. He knew he should go.

His bag sat packed and ready in the truck, the cooler in the walk-in fridge waiting to be picked up.

“Eliot, man, what’s wrong?” And Hardison. Great. “Normally we can barely get a hi/bye on your weekends off.”

“So, what changed?” Parker studied him as if she already knew. “We had sex and now you don’t wanna have sex with Quinn anymore?”

If it had gone Eliot’s way, they never would’ve known about this thing with Quinn. Except Parker was Parker and decided she needed something from him. Which couldn’t be gotten by using the front door of his apartment. Because Parker. And then she had found herself face to face with the business end of Quinn’s gun, squealing with delight as she realized just who had been Sunday morning lazing in Eliot’s bed.

“It’s not…” that. “just sex,” he grits out.

“With Quinn?”

“With YOU!” Eliot threw his hands up and squashed the wish to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off Hardison’s face.

“El, man, that has never been a problem ever. I mean, yeah, he replaced your weekend ladies and that’s cool man. That’s cool. He’s cool!”

“He is!” Parker beamed and hopped up on the counter, reaching for Eliot to drag him between her legs. “You don’t want him anymore?”

“That’s not the point Parker.” Her dainty little hand with the strong clever fingers curved around his face and Eliot gave in to the temptation to press a kiss to the palm and slide his hands around her hips. “I want you more.”

“Different,” she corrected and he sighed

“Yeah.”

Hardison’s stare turned pensive, though the dreamy smirk plastered on his face didn’t budge. “We never expected you to give up the weekend ladies. Time away from the job, pretty ladies, flirtin’. That’s just you, right? You like that.”

And yeah, he liked that. The no strings attached fun. Powering down the constant high alert a little. Good food. Sex. Easy.

“Yeah, but Quinn is not a weekend lady.” Parker stared back at Hardison. “He’s a ‘come over and let's have sex’ friend.”

“You know what? There has been a suspicious absence of weekend ladies since Quinn.”

“Because Boyfriend is much cooler.”

“He’s not my…,” Eliot growled and faltered in the face of Parker’s grin.

“He climbs.”

“Mountains, Parker.”

“Hah!”

Something in that sounds set Eliot’s nerves on edge but he really didn’t want to know what or when those two had been up to anything.

“Alright, Eliot.” Hardison cut in. “Let’s do it this way: We like Quinn. Whatever you two get up to out there? It smooths you out big time. And if you wanna keep doin’ it? Get out a little, get some space. Do whatever you hitter buddies do on your day off? Keep doin’ it.”

He geared up for the second half of his speech with a deep breath and Eliot already opened his mouth to cut him off, only to be stopped by Parker’s finger to his lips. Her other hand tugged his shirt from his pants and snuck under, curving around his side with her fingertips brushing his skin just so. And just so, a little flame flickered to life in his belly. A reminder of her body above his, riding him with obvious delight. A memory of Hardison’s gentle hands caressing over Eliot’s body. Of his cock in Eliot’s mouth. The sounds he made when his world zeroed down to nothing and nothing was Eliot Spencer.

He forced his attention back to Hardison and his speech just in time. “...wanna get rid of him. We can arrange that, too.”

“Woah, stop right there, Hardison! Did you just offer to get rid of _Quinn_ for me?”

“Oh yeah… wait, no! Not like that... In the geeky way. Burn all his passports. Put him on a terrorist watch list. Get him a job as bodyguard for Lady Gaga. Banish him to Timbuktu or whatever.”

Eliot saw the trap. But then, he never could quite guarantee what exactly Hardison would come up with when he set his mind to something. Too much freewheeling brainpower in there. So no…

“I don’t wanna get rid of Quinn. What the hell, man?”

“Because you like him,” Parker stated with a smile, a scary one.

“I like you more.” Eliot brushed his lips over hers, catching a faint hint of apple and smiled back. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Of course. We’re Partners! Capital P! Now with sex.”

Over her shoulder, Eliot saw Hardison grin and lifted his hands. “It’s great sex, El. Don’t deny it.”

Parker agreed. “But whatever you do with Boyfriend is good too. Good for you. He’s good. Go talk to him. And when it’s ok. Bring him. I wanna go climbing! He promised me mountains!”

  
  


Quinn’s good, alright. And that was the problem. Quinn was easy and laid back and spoke with a southern drawl. He liked food. Scratch that, Quinn loved food. He beat up people. He knew how it felt to kill someone in cold blood and he was ok with it. Ok with Eliot.

The darkest parts of Eliot would terrify Hardison, break something between them. Parker might accept them but it would hurt her.

Quinn would look at him, raise an eyebrow and do that thing where he tilted his head to the left with a little shrug. And then they would talk about it like two men that knew exactly how much pressure you needed to kill a person and how it felt to snap a neck.

And that, right there, was the problem with Quinn. No need for caution. No need to protect him. No need for constant vigilance. No baggage aside from a few ground rules.

Quinn was _easy_ in almost all the ways that Parker and Hardison were not and that, not the sex, felt like cheating. Before - before last night - before the last puzzle piece had clicked into place and they - he - finally mustered the courage to take that last step, he always had the excuse for sex to go and see Quinn.

And now? Now he had to admit that he fucking liked Quinn. Something that had never been in question. Not since the dam job, or that stupid _favor_ in the middle of a revolution in Egypt that ended in a luxurious hotel room in Hurghada, drinking beer on the balcony and watching the sunset paint the Red Sea red. Quinn’s smirk as he asked if inviting Eliot to his bed would bring him a shiner or sex.

Sex it had been.

 

A one-time thing until Eliot had come home two months later and found his door unlocked and a half-conscious man on his couch. Three-day-old bullet wound and all.

Eliot had patched him up, let him sleep off the fever for a few days and then fucked him slow and gently. They had both laughed about the nurse jokes.

 

Next had been the boat. Just a little something Eliot had bought from his payout from their first job in case he ever needed to vanish in international waters.

Turns out, Quinn, unlike Hardison, liked boats and the open sea. _I lived on a small island for a few years, Eliot. The water gets in your blood at some point._

Words were compiled and discarded in Eliot’s head. ‘I am sleeping with Parker and Hardison now.’ ‘This is getting too much logistics in the long run.’ ‘I like you, but…’

‘I was stupid and have no idea how I ended up in this clusterfuck of a situation except I do exactly know how. Technically, you were there first, except you weren’t because this has been going on for years and I am unable to settle down or do anything that resembles a relationship without a major freakout.’

“ _Fuck_!”

Eliot eased back on the gas and slowed the truck back to reasonable speed before he punched the dashboard.

Go break up with your deadly friends with benefits guy so you can concentrate on your weird love triangle with your co-workers. That you have loved for so long that you don’t know what’s going on anymore, now that you got everything you ever wanted.

He needed to clear his head but whatever the road through Tillamook forest did for him normally failed to work today.

So he poked at Hardison’s board system until it played some forgettable country music, and forced his mind back on the road.

The early morning moisture had not yet fully evaporated between the trees and that saved him. In front of the shining asphalt, the still dry surface of the nail mat stuck out like a sore thumb.

He hit the breaks not a second too soon, just not soon enough, puncturing only one front tire as the truck skidded to a stop. He was already reaching for the seatbelt and the door, when he noticed the other truck roaring down a forest road to his right and straight at him.

Fuck the tires.

He slammed the shift into gear and floored the gas.

The Challenger might have made it.

The truck, at least, made it survivable.


	2. Lethal Weapon (Safety on)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying to keep a seven day schedule. Meaning, this chapter was due tomorrow.  
> But it's Friday, work is annoying and we all deserve something nice. (Especially Eliot. Sorry, Eliot!)
> 
> Have a great weekend!

Oregon in summer was really nice. Oregon autumn through spring was mostly just foggy and murky and wet.

Quinn pulled his bag from the rental with a grin and tipped his head to the lady watching the parking space near the marina.

She was about 60 and knit socks on the job and, as usual, she waved at him with a smile like she were genuinely happy to see him.

At least, it was charming.

Not that he had a problem with fog or the moisture. It was just that he spent too much time in North Africa and continental Europe to transition quickly. Also, curls.

Grumbling, Quinn set out toward the pier and Eliot’s boat, re-tying his hair on the way.

At least, as foggy and wet as it was, it still trumped Siberia. Everything was better than Siberia. You just didn’t try to go up against Russian in the snow. Not unless you were a Fin.

He had just stopped long enough to ditch his gear in his Vancouver safe house, still damp and drying for the week to come. Joy.

Next job: Somewhere around the Mediterranean.  

But first, this. His steps echoed heavily on the wooden planks and he allowed a big grin to plaster itself on his face.

Eliot always planned these weekend trips around Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, making sure there were as few people as possible around. Healthy paranoia. Easier to pick out bad apples. Harder for anybody to accidentally ID either of them. Just plain good practice.

Clear sidelines to see something amiss. Like a dark boat swaying idly in its moors. No light. Covers still in place.

Turning around, Quinn scanned for Eliot’s truck and came away with nothing, something he should have noticed right away. Rooky mistake. His stomach sank. He had been so lulled by the idea of safety that he walked right past the biggest red flag possible.

He tried calling Eliot and went straight voicemail.

He called Parker.

Hardison had given him an emergency number a while ago, (‘Don’t tell Eliot, he’s prone to freak-outs’) Parker had given him hers to talk shop sometimes. (‘Don’t tell Eliot, you’re like his dirty secret and we don’t want to spoil his fun. Do you think this climbing rig would work?’)

And the reason any of that worked?

Eliot knew. The breach of trust if he ever discovered that Quinn talked to his partners behind his back wouldn’t have been mendable. This wasn’t about Hardison including him into his wider circle of people he added to security or Parker trying to connect to someone. This was about Eliot’s need to keep them safe.

And now it’s about trouble.

“Quinn!” Once he'd had his doubts about being liked by Parker, but he’d had to grant it to the girl, she was a brilliant thief, fantastic climber, too.

It had taken them about two tense minutes and a compliment from Quinn to hit it off on that front and granted, he'd had led less weird conversations on a Sunday, naked in bed but there was little defense against Parker’s quirky brand of excitement.

“Hello, girlfriend!”  

The nicknames had been an early addition when she had decided that she was ok with Quinn so close to Eliot. Nicknames, apparently, denoted friendship because they were like secrets that people gifted one another.

“Don’t let Sparky hear that. He’s been very grouchy about it all morning. We had sex.”

Shock stirred at the declaration, followed by a wave of _finally_ and then sadness-tinged relief.

The waves lapped gently against the boat’s hull. So that’s why.

He probably sat in Portland in his cozy little pub with his cute partners and did what one did if one had cute little partners.

With the next thought, worry crashed that house of cards. Not Eliot. Not like this. And yeah, he might idolize him a little but one thing Eliot Spencer didn’t do was run from trouble. Or set up his friends.

“Congratulations. Assume it was good?”

“Yep.” She added little pop there at the end for emphasis. “Steal from the Louvre good.”

Quinn forced a laugh and turned to walk back to his car. “Please tell me he’s sequestered away with Hardison in the bedroom?”

“No? Hardison’s right here with me.”

Every alarm bell in Quinn’s arsenal blared at once and then fell into absolute calm.

Quinn ran through his mental checklist: gun, knives at his ankles and thigh. The bands around his right wrist laying easily again his skin. The peaceful mist around him turned into a wealth of hidden ambush locations.

“Are you bug-proof?”

Parker’s voice over the phone sharpened. “Why?” In the background he heard footsteps, a door closing heavily.

“I'm scanning.” Hardison. Then. “We’re clear.” Suddenly much louder.

“Why,” Parker asked again.

“Because he is not here.” Quinn threw the bag in the backseat, not bothering with the trunk, and pulled the HK from the glove compartment. The MAC 50 went into the holster taped under the dash, knife in the middle console.

“He should be,” Parker conceded. “He left five hours ago.”

Three for the drive, one to ready the boat, one for safety.

Quinn got behind the wheel and shoved the phone into its bracket.

“I’m on my way.”

 

~~~

 

Halfway along US-26 Quinn’s phone rang. “Speaking.”

“Yo, boyfriend.”

“Hardison…” Quinn passed a trailer in front of him, carefully scratching the speed limit. “is that gonna become a thing now?”

“Parker says it is and I’m not talkin’ back to ma girl. Where are you?”

He reached out to zoom out the nav for the nearest town but Hardison already rambled on. “No wait, I gotcha. Reprogramming your nav system now. You’re gonna get off the 26 towards a town called Timber.”

25 minutes, according to the route planner. The speed limit agreed.

Quinn pulled over into the opposite lane and floored it. Rush hour had not yet started this early in the afternoon and the worst thing on the road was the occasional soccer mom returning from Walmart.

“You found ‘im?”

“I know where he _vanished_. And I don’t think it was an accident but I’m still trying to load the data from the camera and his board systems. The connection out there sucks!”

“Alright, so you hacked his car and he’s not there?”

“No, I hacked _your_ car. Eliot’s is linked to my servers anyway. I can track the car, onboard diagnostics, camera. Hell, I can tell you what music he's listening to. I just need the data but I can’t get a strong enough uplink to synchronize.”

“Speak idiot to me. What do you need? If I’ll have to tow his car to somewhere you can get a better connection I need to get me a different ride.”

“No, no… find his truck. Just… find the truck, ok?” Hardison’s voice broke on that last syllable and Quinn quickly reassessed the man. He might be brilliant at what he did, but he remained a civilian.

“I’m twenty minutes out.”

 

He made it in fifteen and possibly gave an old lady a heart attack. Pretty sure, she misinterpreted his apologetic gesture in the rearview mirror, too.

The navigation system directed him to a long stretch of slow curving road between a lonely farmhouse and a deserted rest stop, dozens of miles to the next proper human habitat.

Trees and bushes covered the low rising embankments on both sides, shortening the sight lines to practically nothing.

He almost missed the spot. In his head, there had been this expectation of carnage, mangled metal, blood, a few bodies. As it were, the skid lines on the wet asphalt registered only after the crunch of broken glass set his mind to alert. That alone said something about the kind of operation they were dealing with. 

He pulled the BMW onto the gravel of the rest stop a few hundred meters down the road.

“Hardison?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“I’m at your last point of contact. Do you want the good news first?”

“Have you found him?” Parker piped in, painful hope coloring her brittle voice.

 _Parker_ , he remembered Eliot saying, just gentlemanly warning him not to mess with the thief, _she knows better than most how shitty the world can be, she just ignores it in favor of happier things. She chooses to be innocent._ Then he had smiled and taken a swig from his beer. _That’s the world’s best infiltrator. She just hasn’t pondered murder too closely yet. Hopefully never will or we’re all fucked._

“No. But hear me out... that’s a good thing.”  Quinn quickly ran through the scene again, digesting all the things he had understood at a glance into easy bits. “That means they took him. And you don’t take bodies. They are messy and have a tendency to show up at the wrong moments.

There are tire marks on the road coming from your direction, Eliot did an emergency braking. Meaning, he was alive.

When you take out the driver of a vehicle going above 5 mph, you are dealing with a full-blown car crash. There are trees on both sides and an embankment going up and no way would that escape undamaged if someone lost control of a pick-up truck.”

“They could have killed him after…”

Hardison groaned at Parker’s words and Quinn rubbed his eyes. _She just hasn’t pondered murder yet._

“No. Nobody in their right mind would try to take on Eliot Spencer hands on unless they absolutely have to. The only way to kill him is a bullet from a safe distance.

There are enough elevated points along the route to do that. It runs along the top of a hill. Shoot him and then push the vehicle off the road if physics doesn’t do it for you. Worst case scenario, someone will find it within the hour, but you’re already gone. Best case scenario? They’ll find it in twenty years because some hunter took a wrong turn.”

“You know, man… one day I’ll have thoughts about what you just said long enough to be scared shitless. _And_ ponder why you have a plan to kill Eliot. Until that ominous day: What do we do now?”

“They have him alive.” Parker forced the words through clenched teeth. “They got their hands on the truck. There is evidence.”

“Right. And I’m gonna go…,” Quinn got out of the car and went for the other bag in the trunk. “...and take a look.”

“Please tell me you got a headset or something and can take me with you.”

“Bluetooth. But if the connection is as bad as you said that won’t do us much good.”

He exchanged his suit jacket for woodland camo and his suit pants for a pair of cargos.

“No man, that’s different connections. I routed you over a military satellite. We’ll be fine. Google Maps’s still a no go, though. Sorry. Just… don’t get lost.”

Quinn’s hand stilled, where he was shoving the MAC into his shoulder holster, wondering what, if anything, he should say about that. Shaking his head, he pulled a knit cap over his head instead.

With the autumn leaves softened by the moist weather, moving between the trees was a cakewalk, down the hill and circling north, carefully out of sight from the hilltop road. Whoever had chosen that location had damn well known what they did. The sight lines were perfect.

“Alright, you’re on a level with the crash site. Straight up ahead is the first turn of the forest road that runs parallel away from you.”

Exactly where Quinn would’ve put up a sentry, to catch anybody sniffing around.

He slowly worked his way up the soft, fertile earth, easy to slip if the terrain had just been a little steeper, or his boots a bit less heavy. Kidnappers didn’t find spots like this one on a whim. Someone had put a lot of expertise into getting their hands on Eliot.

The sentry crouched 30 meters down the road. Outdoor jacket, jeans, baseball cap, he looked like a local outdoorsman. Except for the knife in his boots and the way he watched junction to the bigger road, no matter how bored he looked.

With this position, he could hear any car approaching, even with the embankment to his right cutting off the sightlines. And behind him, a camouflage net haphazardly thrown over it, two trucks, one of which was a light grey Silverado. Even from this distance, Quinn could see the damage to its right side.

“Got it.” Out of old habit, he tugged his gloves off to snap on the external objective for his phone and took a few pictures of the guy and the trucks. “The truck’s still here. My guess would be, they pulled it out of sight and plan to pick it up when it’s dark. And a guard.”

“You knock him out?”

“No.” Parkers voice sounded different, calm and cold and so far away that Quinn had trouble finding even a memory of the quirky, laughing girl in it. “We don’t want them to know we’re here. Alec, can you distract him?”

“Can I… Am I Mary Poppins?”

Quinn grinned despite himself. “Dunno. Are you?”

“Depends on what you need? I have no visuals of the situation and if that guy is a pro, he might not fall for it.”

Quinn scanned their surroundings, the nice view over a sea of trees, the lonely silence of a slow wind brushing through the branches. He heard the faint gurgle of water in the distance.

A small animal burrowed into the leaves to Quinn’s right. Boots scuffed on gravel as the guard shifted his position, not bothering with subtlety.

“He will. He’s been sitting here for 3 hours, watching two dead trucks and staring at shrubbery in a situation that is as far removed from danger as possible. He’s young, he’s bored out of his mind. As long as he can justify it with his orders, he’ll jump at the chance for a distraction.”

“Good, that’s good. Let me Mary Poppins your car. Christ, this connection is a joke. Aaaaaand we are uploading with the speed of a phone modem. Welcome to 1995.”

“Hardison?” Quinn took a deep breath, closing his eyes for just a moment. He had almost forgotten how obnoxious the nerd squad could be. Eliot never got around to spill his secret on how to endure people like Hardison for more than 5-minute snippets.

“Yes, Quinn?”

“Talk less. And tell me what I’m supposed to do when I reach the truck. Towing is out of the question.”

“Oh, oh yeah. That’s easy. Under the dash, right above the middle console, there’s a compartment. You just screw the cover off and pull out the hard drive. It’s hot swap, so never mind any wires, just grab it and go.”

And that right there was the reason why. With a careful breath, Quinn carefully patted down his right thigh pocket. Great. “Next time if I have to unscrew anything, tell me beforehand to bring tools.”

“Oh…” Silence. “Eliot always has his…”

“But I am not Eliot, dammit!”

He realized they heard the gnashing of his teeth in the forced calm of Parker’s voice. “Eliot always has basic tools in the glove compartment.”

Not their fault. Really not. They expected him to fill a gap that he had neither the idea nor the size of. While he and Eliot roughly filled the same niche, the other hitter had long since moved into his own corner, one with a lot less hours on a sniper rifle. It was a corner that nobody else could fill. Not that Quinn tried. He was fine. Maybe he had shifted his focus a little after Washington. Was still trying to shift the focus away from straight up wet work. Checked a little closer on his potential target. Focused a little harder on retrieval than removal, maybe.

He still didn’t know what might have happened if he’d been assigned the dispatcher and not the FEMA director. He snorted. Chances were, Eliot would’ve plain talked him out of taking the shot.

But neither of the scared people in his ear knew that. They only cared to get their partner back.

“Sorry.” Hardison’s voice carried the same worry that ate away at Quinn since he found the deserted boat in Astoria.

“It’s cool man. Me too. Me too.”

Quinn still pondered what else to say, something conciliatory when he heard Hardison’s soft, triumphant grunt.

“Upload’s done. One distraction coming up. You ready, boyfriend?”

Idiot.

“Ready. Let’s dance.”

The sounds of car doors slamming down the road where Quinn’s BMW was parked, startled even him. Across from him, the guard looked up, curious at first, then alarmed when the sounds shifted to a loud discussion between two men. Quinn, farther back and with the hilltop between them could barely hear single words. But “case”, “restraining order” and “gun” were enough to bring the man to his feet and a gun into his hands.

“What is that?”

Hardison snickered. “Some ripped audio from Lethal Weapon.”

“Hardison?”

“Yes, Quinn?”

“Can I keep you?”

The faint tension between them dispersed with Hardison’s comedic snort. “Sorry, man. Already taken. But we can talk about a temporary lease on occasion.”

Others might have criticized their banter as inappropriate given the situation, but Quinn had lived through enough tension in his life to understand the need.

He watched the guard snail pace his way down the road, counting the seconds until he finally vanished out of sight behind the embankment and Quinn could dart across the forest road and duck under the tarp and between the trucks.

The inside of Eliot’s Silverado reeked of spilled beer, a shattered six-pack spread all over the backseat where a travel bag still sat, along with the cooler.

Glass fragments covered every surface, except the driver’s seat, the only intact window on the left, albeit splintered around an unmistakable splash of blood. The airbag hung from the wheel like a very perverse allegory of a used condom, and Quinn couldn’t hold back the sigh of relief at the absence of blood. And then there was the front seat. Intact.

No bullet holes. They had crashed into him from the right, the whole side caved in, playing it safe with their target. The truck might’ve been a loss but Eliot, aside from some magnificent whiplash, should be fine.

 

“Ok, I’m in.”

Inside the glove compartment he found a knife, a pair of gloves, chewing gum, CDs and a roll of tools.

It took not even 30 seconds to grab the hard disk and replace the panel.

“Alright, got the drive. Any other weird technological wizardry you need me to activate?”

He spent a few seconds more to snap pictures. The dash. The blood. The passenger door and the backseat.

“I don’t.. I dunno. I don’t wanna tip them off. I… “ Hardison swallowed audibly through the line and Parker cut in. “Can you see if Eliot’s second phone is in his bag?”

“His second phone?” Quinn twisted between the seats until he could reach the bag and fish through the side pockets for the phone?

Parker sounded unconcerned. “Yeah, his CIA phone.”

“Eliot has a CIA phone?!” All of Hardison’s insecurity seemed swept away by the pure indignation that Eliot possessed an electronic device he had no access to.

“Sure. It’s the one he uses when he’s doing outside work.”

Which was apparently a sleek black flip phone, simple and sturdy. “Looks like he does.” Quinn couldn’t resist to take a look. “What do you want me to do?”

“Unbelievable,” Hardison muttered. “Get me the number. Put it back. Where you found it. I’ll do the rest. It’s not like he has any numbers saved in there or something.”

“Alright.” Quinn did as he was told, restoring the original situation and then he got the hell out.

If the guard had moved with the same careful speed, he’d be about halfway to Quinn’s car, but why take a risk.

He snapped one last picture of the second truck and the licence plate, then he sprinted back into the woods.  

So far so good.

Now that he knew the ground and the terrain, he could wind his way around the trees, using them as handholds to dash along the hill instead of sneaking the long way round.

He reached the rest stop in good time, just as the guard turned the corner from the road, desperately trying for casual.

Bless his heart.

Quinn pulled his hair free from the tie and shook his head to let curls spread around his head.

The jacket got turned inside out, hanging loosely from his fingers to camouflage the camouflage as he strolled from the treeline, very obviously pulling up the zipper of his pants.

They both stopped frozen on the spot. The BMW provided an excellent sigh obstacle, hiding Quinn’s shoes and the jacket as he walked over, half yelling over the noise of the recording.

“Sorry! It does that...or maybe I hit….uh...” He twisted the key in his fingers, pressing the buttons in wild order, grinning helplessly the whole time until Hardison finally turned it off.

“Uhm, sorry man… I just went to stretch my legs a little, you know?” He pointed over his shoulder and none too subtly moved the jacket in front of his crotch. “Guess I...Probably should get going, shouldn’t I?”

The guard - and Quinn estimated his age down by another few years - looked at him helplessly and nodded, awkwardly hiding his right hand with the gun behind his back.

“Alright then. Uh, bye. Have a nice day!”

Quinn hurried around the car and got in, starting the engine before the embarrassed kid got over the shock of having caught someone in the fact of indiscriminate urination and realized the combat boots or the fact that the perpetrator wore cargos with a dress shirt.

 

~~~

 

“Motherfucking bastards!”

Hardison came storming to the briefing table, laptop in hand and planted himself in front of Parker and Quinn, cutting them off from the 12th repeat of the video of Eliot’s dash cam.

So far, all they had gotten from it was the clockwork precision of the hit and the fact that they had tased Eliot to subdue him. They both agreed that the blood on the window stemmed from an arm or a hand.

No IDs, no nothing.

“I went over the pictures.” Hardison slammed the laptop onto the table top. “There is not much from Eliot’s truck. They didn’t take any of his stuff aside from the things he had on him. But the other truck… you will not believe this.”

He pulled the photos of the second truck’s license plate onto the screen. “This is a rental. Under the name of Matthew Scholes. Lives in Seattle. Former Air Force. Works security. Two arrests for battery. But nothing major ever came out of it.”

Parker’s eyes sharpened with every word and something in her mind started visibly churning.

“That bastard!” She finally pushed away from the table with a pained scream.

“He said Marx found him! I knew it!”

Hardison tapped a few keys and Scholes driver’s license was joined by his employment record.

“The guard’s name is Charlie Madsen. Ex-Marines.”

“Marx…”

Quinn took a careful step back as Parker’s hands crashed onto the table.

“Hey, mama... Parker!”

Hardison pushed the laptop aside and covered her fingers with his. “Not your fault.”

She shook him off with a wild jerk. “I knew that something was off! Marx always said that Vaughn came to him and asked for help. But Vaughn this morning said that Marx found _them_ when the trouble started.”

She bit her fist and almost Quinn’s hand when he gently pushed hers down. “Don’t hurt yourself. Eliot needs these hands intact.”

Her face twisted with misery. “He played us all along. He was after Eliot the whole time and he _conned_ us. He knows me and Hardison. He knows the pub. And I told Eliot to go to Astoria. Quinn, I told him to go!”

Parker was a legend in their world. The world’s best thief. She who beat a Steranko not once but twice.

He would like to hug her, this girl with the terrified eyes but Hardison already rounded the table and folded her into his arms.

“We’ll get him back.” His eyes closed when the wetness threatens to spill over. “We know who got him and we will get him back.”

She sniffed against Hardison’s shoulder and wrapped her wiry arms around his middle until it looked like it hurt. “You think Eliot minds if I murder him?”

“Marx? Dunno. I think people who come after the team are exempt from the no kill rule.”

Quinn turned the laptop around until he could see the screen. He spoke softly. “I don’t think that rule applies to me. I work pro bono for friends.”

Seeing Parker lift her head and the dangerous spark flare to life in her eyes was worth the words. “Alright, girlfriend?”

“Yeah.” She bared her teeth. “Let’s go steal a traitor!”

 

~~~

 

“Thomas Marx, born 7th of August 1975 in Chicago. His father, Alexander Marx, owned a mid sized transport company. His mother worked there as a bookkeeper.

There have been investigations into alleged ties to organized crime but they were dropped with no charges. Nothing unusual.

Marx was captain of the swim team at his high school, won several regional titles. Even got a partial scholarship for College but he dropped out after a year. Worked for daddy for another year before he joined the army.” A few new pictures appeared on the front screen of a young and fresh faced Thomas Marx in combat greens and a broad grin.

“He made his way through special forces training and into the Green Berets.”

“And that’s where he met Eliot?” Parker asked, calm again and hyper focused.

Hardison hesitated. “Maybe?”  

“No, not yet. They met in the war.” Quinn interjected. “A lot of joint operations took place in the same theatres, but they all spawned “secondary” locations where the dirty action happened and once you reach a certain paygrade you keep running into the same people all over.”

Hardison perked up. “Oh. You been in that paygrade?”

“Me? No.” Quinn smiled easily as he slid out from behind the table and walked up to the screens to stare at the pair of hazel eyes and the short cropped hair. The grin. As if the man had something to prove. “And neither has Marx. Look for official wars. That’s where they met.”  In his head, he counted, walking back to his seat. “The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq. One of those.” He paused. “Maybe Somalia.”

“And one of those is the reason he went after Eliot.”

Hardison regarded him a moment and turned back his notebook to type. Parker was not so easily distracted.

“Never?” She leaned close and stared at him from below like a very hungry and a little sadistic cat. “You almost took out Eliot. You were his replacement Eliot! How can you be bad.”

“I never said I was bad, Parker.”

She hissed. “Mediocre then!”

“I am not mediocre!”

“Then you were lying.”

“Maybe I just went freelance before they could drag me into that swamp?”

They appraised each other over not even an arm’s length. Then she shrugged. “No. That’s not it.”

She didn’t comment further and Quinn had no desire to correct her.

“Coffee?”

“Yes.”

Quinn watched her saunter off towards the kitchen and turned his attention to Hardison where he sat curled over his notebook, deep lines bracketing his mouth.

When Parker reappeared, she placed a cup in front of Quinn and a fresh bottle of orange soda in front of Hardison before she slid into her seat, only to thumb through the same files he had already sorted through while Hardison was searching.

The top left corner of the screens showed a number. Seven hours, 25 minutes since Eliot had left the pub.

“If he wants something from him, Eliot’s still fine,” Parker said and he nodded. “What if he wants revenge for something?”

Quinn answered with a wry twist to his mouth. “Think positive.” just as Hardison sat straighter.

“Would you look at that!”

The picture he pulled up showed four men smiling broadly into the camera, decked in full combat gear, sunglasses, rifles. One of them was Marx on the left, the other a younger, hungrier version of Eliot, wearing a bright blue shirt under his body armor, in the middle.

Quinn frowned at the picture.

“That shirt is not regulation. Army never would’ve let him on the street in that. He was working for a PMC. That’s Iraq. Possibly Bagdad.”

“No, Eliot was not working for a PMC.” Hardison turned to them, all confidence in his tall frame and loose limbs, as he tapped on the giant on the right. “He was working for that guy.”

“Vance,” Parker murmured and pursed her lips. “Who’s the fourth guy?”

“Well that… “ Hardison grinned grimly. “is someone I know how to actually contact without having to hack Homeland Security. Just… gimme a second.”

Quinn shook his head as he stepped closer. “Where’d you even find that?”

Hardison spoke without looking up from his phone. “Would you believe if I told you that Marx has it on his Facebook, set to eyes only?”

“No. Because that’d be…”

“Age of the geek, baby,” Hardison deadpanned but lifted his hand to silence his audience, his attention solely on the call.

‘C’mon man….please be not a burner, please be not a… oh. Hi! Hardison here. Please tell me you’re in the US right now.”

The left sunk deep into the pocket of his slacks, Hardison paced a slow figure eight in front of his screen while Parker shrugged at Quinn.

“That’s awesome man. Listen, uhm… thing is… “ He stopped with a deep breath.

“Yes, there’s a reason I’m calling you and not Eliot. It starts with I’m not kidding but someone nabbed Eliot. We have a lead. Name’s Thomas Marx. That ring a bell?

Oh thank fuck! Our only other lead is Vance and I will be a happy hippie if I never have to see that sonofabitch ever again. No, seriously, thank you, Shelley! How soon can you…?”

“Oh!” Parker sat up straight.  Her eyes flickered over the screen, jumping from file to file, pulling up one or two new ones, until her eyes glowed with laser sharp focus. “That’s our way in.”

In the background, Hardison promised to send the files they had on Marx, while Parker’s predator gaze turned to Quinn.

“Hey guys, Shelley’s gonna be here in about four hours. He knows Marx. They’re still in contact.” Hardison talked into the room. “He’s bringing friends.”

Quinn nodded to both of them. “Way in, huh?”

“How do you feel about being a Trojan Horse, Quinn?” Parker asked, a sweet smile plastered to her lips about as real as a cardboard cutout.

Hardison managed an actual chuckle. “Does that make Eliot Helena?” at the same time as Quinn asked: “Do you have a hair trimmer?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea that Quinn was one of the assassins in "The Rundown Job" came from John Rogers' commentary that they actually planned to have Quinn be the guy that Eliot stopped from shooting their target. Which might have been rather interesting


	3. How to climb an unclimbable mountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not Saturday again. 
> 
> That's because half my family is having a big birthday this week and I will be traveling a LOT.  
> So, one day early.  
> Next week might be a day or two late ^^
> 
> Enjoy.

“Why tho?” Hardison stared at the almost complete ID on his screen, then at the man shoveling chili into his mouth next to him. “There is nothing wrong with fake Seals. Everybody likes Seals these days.”

Quinn swiped a piece of bread through the bowl and took his sweet time chewing before he answered. “Marx’s not supposed to like me. He’s supposed to get me do his dirty work.” 

Even sitting at the briefing table, bent over a bowl of Eliot’s chili, Quinn oozed some kind of relaxed aggression, a tension drumming under his skin only waiting for a chance to break out.  

“And with the amount of fake Seals running around,” he said and glanced in Hardison’s direction. “you’d think people started recognizing each other at some point. There are not that many of ‘em, in reality, you know?”

He looked sharper with his hair cut. Parker had gone all out, cropping it military short, until the natural curl almost vanished. 

They had run through that same argument twice already, ever since Quinn had handed him the ID, already fixed with a background story, records and an idea of who he might be. 

Now, Quinn’s mouth curled up as he shoved another spoonful of chili between his lips, just waiting for Hardison to say it. Not like they had much else to do while Parker waited for Shelley and tried to keep up appearances, just in case Marx had someone on surveillance. 

“But why does it have to be Foreign Legion? I have a million ready-made IDs from every American military branch. Why this?”

Quinn shrugged and chewed, still chewing, when a sly voice behind them answered for him. “Because the FFL  _ has _ that reputation that you’re looking for. Foreign country. Notoriously secretive. High turnaround.” 

Shelley waltzed into their offices with the easygoing aura of a man who had nothing to fear, a sharp-eyed Parker on his heels.  He looked a little tired around the edges but his smile as he walked up to Hardison and shook his hand was genuine. 

“How ya doin’, my friend?”

“Would be doin’ better if I knew where Eliot was and why _he...”_ He pointed at Quinn who spread his hands in that shrug-nod-smirk that was his go-to version of a human expression and then at the mess on the display. “...made me hack French servers.”  

Shelley mustered Quinn as Quinn mustered him and for a moment the testosterone levels in the room peaked at critical measures before Quinn relented easily and stuck out his hand. 

“Shelley, I presume?”

“Quinn.”

Parker appeared between them, like she tended to do, looking at both men. “I’m Parker.”

Hardison saw the little smile around Quinn’s eyes only because he was looking at him, but there he was, laughing - well, for a given amount of laughing - at Parker’s jokes.

“Great,” Hardison threw the picture of Marx, Shelley, Eliot and Vance and Quinn’s ID with CV up on the big screen. “And I am the only person with more than one name in the room. That means I have double your power and would like to continue with my job. Why?”

“What kind of man goes to be hired in a foreign country’s army, instead of his own?” Shelley asked in response.

“Someone who is running? ” Parker frowned, looking at Quinn, then at Shelley, half prodding, half fishing for the into. “They do hire convicts, right?”

“They do,” Shelley confirmed. “That’s one reason.” 

Something about this, the way Shelley had asked the question, bounced around Hardison’s head and kicked loose from free-floating memories, things Eliot had once said when they’d talked about his dad and hometown.  _ “But I wanted to get out. Change the world…  _ Needed _ to get out.  _

In Washington, it had taken Vance four words to immediately leash Eliot. “You took an oath.”

He checked out the guy on the screen, the ID that wore Quinn’s face. What if you didn’t want to change the world? Or the leash. Just get out and get away and see where it got you, just as long as it was away?

“Soldier of fortune,” he threw in. “No baggage, none of the hero stuff...Just, get out into the  world?”

“Meet interesting people,” Quinn agreed, razor-sharp smile pointed at Shelley. The left side of Shelley’s mouth kicked up. 

“...Kill them.” 

Of course… 

Hardison shook his head but swallowed the comment.

“Shelley’s friends are interesting...” Parker gravitated naturally into Hardison’s orbit, placing herself between him and Quinn and Shelley as if she were trying to block him. “I like the mercenary idea. Good job.”

Her lips brushed Hardison’s cheek as if he had come up with a ready-made French ID of an American born Legionnaire. Well, he’d take it.

“It’s a sound idea,” Shelley agreed. “I went over what you have and whatever Marx is doing there, he’d want someone like that for the operation.” 

_ That _ meaning anti-terrorism work, former paratrooper, a lot of classified work under Mr. Martin’s belt, all bolstered by a few hinky things after his return to civilian life.

“Listen to him, Hardison, if you don’t wanna listen to me,” Quinn quipped and curled his arm around Parker’s middle to give her an affectionate squeeze, bringing forth a tiny smile. Hardison pondered giving Julien Martin syphilis. If only that wouldn’t mess up the work that had gone into making the identity airtight.

“Question is,” Parker cut in and tugged at Quinn’s hair, “can you do it? Hitter normally is outside the con, watching out for the others not in the middle of it, grifting.” She made a face. “I miss the curls. Eliot’s gonna miss the curls.”

The three men around her stilled. Shelley, stunned. Hardison… he tried he damnest not to think about Eliot at the moment and Quinn… Quinn looked at Parker with the saddest non-expression since Han Solo thought Leia slept with Luke and tucked her fringes behind her ear. “It’ll grow out soon.” Hardison wasn’t sure if Quinn realized how lost he looked when he tried to smile at Parker. “And he got you.”

Parker tugged harder. “I don’t have curls and Hardison’s are too different.”

Above their heads, Hardison caught Shelley’s disbelieving look. “Don’t ask,” he mouthed, hoping that the soldier would let it lie and not point at the big elephant in the room that they all tried to avoid. They were fine climbing on it and poking it - gently and with great care - and generally being alright with its existence but like the Emperor’s clothes, all this might evaporate the moment someone opened their mouth and said it out loud. 

“Back to important things…”

“If I can do it?” Quinn dragged his eyes away from Parker, snapping the smirk back onto his face. “You mean, can I go in alone and play mercenary so they’ll let me near Eliot? Really?” He eyed Parker, armor and distance plastered back in place by a health dose of consternation. “Really?”

Her nod held all the earnestness of her sometimes clueless heart and even Shelley grinned a little at that.

“Baby girl… he’ll basically be playin’ himself. He’ll be fine, I think.”

“If he manages to convince them that he speaks French,” Shelley issued a challenge, only to be shot down immediately. 

“Ne t'inquiète pas pour ça, chéri.” 

 

~~~

 

“Where did we meet?” Shelley twirled the pen in his hand against the notepad in front of him.

“Afghanistan. Everybody and their mother did a tour in Afghanistan.” Quinn tugged at his hair again, barely deterred when Parker swatted his hand away from her point behind the couch.  “The rest is classified and I do not care for you kicking my ass for spilling.”

Shelley threw them one glance from his spot on the briefing table and went back to his notepad, deciding for ignorance and bliss.   

“Works. But why Marx. This guy… Martin. Why would someone with that profile want to work with Marx?” 

Hardison dropped his head against the back of the couch to stare up at his girlfriend. “So...everyone met in Afghanistan works, but everyone’s a Navy Seal doesn’t,” he murmured to her in the hopes that she’d pick up the bait. She mostly ignored the guys’ conversation in favor of her own brain, planning already the total annihilation of Thomas Marx and someone sometimes needed to drag her back from that edge a little. Quinn seemed an easy target for her, sprawled on the couch next to Hardison.

Easier than Hardison. She stared back at him with a barely-there smile, scratching his scalp with a slow, very gentle movement. As if she tried to hard to contain the things inside her. Hardison took her hand with what he hoped looked like a real smile and tugged it down against his shoulder, close enough for her to feel his heartbeat. 

“I’m thinking, he needs a way to lie low for a while but can’t afford to not work,” Quinn commented with a quick glance to Parker.

“Something in Europe,” Hardison commented, swallowing the worst of the worry. “Ukrainians?  Politicians? Ukrainian politicians.” He turned his tablet toward Quinn and smiled, challenging him to disagree. 

Quinn didn’t. He spread his hands and answered the smile, that bastard. “I’ve done too much business in Ukraine to dispute that, my friend.”

Shelley narrowed his eyes and gave that half quirk of his mouth. “Guess we need a fresh police warrant for Ukraine..”

Hardison pushed himself upright and tabbed back into Julien Martin’s ID, relegating his running searches on Marx to the background. “Guess we do…”

Shelley watched them a moment longer before he cleared his throat. 

“How do you wanna play this anyways? Plant Quinn, find Eliot, extract him?”

Hardison felt his gaze on him and relegated the question to Parker with a quick finger point upward. Quinn instantly followed his lead, shifting in his seat to give Parker and audience. 

“No,” she smiled and Hardison practically heard Shelley shudder. One of those smiles then, the one reserved to dissecting disgusting little insects and guys who had pissed her off. “I mean… yes. We want Eliot back. But then we go and destroy Marx.”

She didn’t say ‘take down’ or ‘take care off’. She said destroy. “Damn right, we are.”

Hardison pondered. “Mob ties?” 

Quinn shrugged. “Why not.”

“No,” Parker cut in. “We don’t know if Marx works with the mob. We want him to want Quinn.”

Looking up, Quinn caught her hand this time before she could tug at his not quite curls again. “Everybody wants me, girlfriend.”

“How do you plan on taking down someone like Marx? Short of killing him…”

“Absolutely an option,” commented Quinn. 

“But not enough.” 

Parker walked around the couch. 

A slender girl in leggings and a grey shirt, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Unless anyone noticed the way her feet planted on the floor, firm and without the slightest wobble, or the tension in her body perfectly centering her in absolute balance as she circled around the room and towards the glass wall and seemingly random words she had marked down earlier. 

“Marx has been observing us for months. He knows what we do and how we do it. We can take him out but the information will still be out there.”

“What even is it that you do exactly?” Shelley asked silently under her words. 

“So, what we will be doing instead is finding out what Marx wants and then we give it to him. And while we’re on it, we steal back our information. She swiveled on her heels and towards Shelley. 

“We take down bad guys. What is it that he could want?”

Quinn answered before Hardison had a chance to spread his theory. “Antiques? The only things you could get in Iraq 2003 that you can’t get just as easily somewhere else were antiques.”

Shelley shook his head. “But why Eliot? He had nothing to do with antiques when we were in Iraq.” 

“Uhm….” Hardison frowned. “Are you sure? Because Eliot…”

“Yes, he is sure.” Parker stared. 

Hardison took a moment and Quinn’s death stare to realize what he’d almost said. He sighed. 

“So, we need to hear it from the source.”

“Marx.” Shelley nodded. “Alright. I’ll get to it.”

“Good! I need to make a call.” Parker turned to march out of the room, barely waiting for Shelley to follow, who took another second to stare at the men on the couch in baffled bewilderment. 

Quinn answered when Hardison didn’t bother. “You’ll get used to it. Just assume that her madness has a lot of method to it.”

Hardison shot Shelley a glance out of the corner of his eyes as the man followed Parker. “She is not crazy.” 

Quinn snorted. “No, she isn’t. But he’ll find that soon enough.”

Silence settled around them, broken only by Hardison’s occasional muttering and however much he would have loved to say that it was the comfortable kind… it wasn’t. 

He felt Quinn’s attention like a particularly unpleasant itch at the back of his neck and the man wasn’t even looking at him. 

Good thing that Hardison was very apt at ignoring that kind of person in his immediate vicinity. 

Up until Quinn stood and walked over to the briefing table. Bringing distance between them. Because that was not ominous at all. 

But all he did was lean his long frame against the edge in a way that might have been cool  _ if  _ that were a Casablanca movie and  _ if  _ he were holding a glass of whiskey. 

Alright, that was undeserved. Quinn looked cool in a tailored suit kind of way, one side of his mouth curled up until a dimple appeared. Suave and dangerous and Sophie would love that.

“How’re you holding up there pal?” 

Hardison looked up, mustered Quinn and looked back down, hitting ‘send’ on the way. 

Setting up another bullet point on Julien Martin’s CV of crime had taken less than five minutes and before he answered, he went straight back to what he’d been doing for the last seven hours. 

“Still tryin’ to take apart Marx’s business.” 

There might have been something more to say there, about the clusterfuck of interlacing businesses and assets that he had to untangle. And it wasn’t difficult per se. But neither was sorting lentils and still Cinderella had taken a really long time. He fished his bottle of orange soda from the floor and took a healthy swig. Time was was the last thing they had. 

And maybe it was the fact that they were alone or the sympathetic glint in … Jesus, Eliot’s boyfriend’s eyes… 

To him and Parker, Quinn had always been “the boyfriend”. Ever since Parker had come home cackling with glee as she had caught them as good as in flagranti delicto. 

Quinn just was. 

He existed in that space that neither Hardison nor Parker filled. The ‘not team’, ‘gone fishing’, ‘do violence’ kind of space that Eliot had plenty of but that didn’t necessarily come with the trust of letting anybody take care of him when he was shot. 

And way back, when this had started between Quinn and Eliot, right before the team’s move to Seattle, Hardison had been way too busy with Parker to figure out that she and he and that whole thing with Eliot was still growing and how it might outgrow what it had previously been. 

Parker had clued herself in much sooner and then she had just shrugged and done her thing, as usual. Her thing, aka Hardison, and annoying Eliot and Eliot with Quinn. 

‘Course nobody told Eliot, not like that. Eliot dealt badly with personal emotion on his best of days. 

They just accepted it as a thing and somehow, even now… Hardison looked up and saw ‘boyfriend’. The other one. 

And as such, Quinn deserved the truth. 

“I should’ve seen through it sooner.” On the screen, Marx’s financial statements spread out like the proverbial haystack. 

”I mean… I checked his businesses, all of ‘em. All straightforward like you expect it. Some tax evasion. Some semi-legal brokering stuff with some really questionable people. But just...”

Quinn followed the lead. “He didn’t hide it.”

“No, he let me find it. That’s the fucked up part. How’d you know to look for it if it isn’t hidden, ya know?” Hardison’s hands flapped at the screen as if the cutting motion could make someone understand, even without seeing what he saw. “There is no big numbers, a few money dumps, a few weird investments. But none of them reason to dig deeper.” Hardison rubbed his eyes and sighed. “He was Eliot’s friend.”

Quinn mouth twisted as his eyes flitted to the side, the lines bracketing his mouth getting deeper for one angry moment. “He counted on Eliot’s loyalty. Clever.” 

“Yeah.” 

They avoided looking at each for a long moment after that, each fuming in silence until Hardison boiled over. “Ima gonna take that  _ fucker _ down, I swear.”

He slammed the bottle of soda on the table with enough force to topple it. 

The number in the corner of the big screen said 11 hours and 48 minutes and it just kept ticking up like Hardison’s background panic level with every passing minute.

“We’ll get him back, Hardison. He’s tough. He’ll hang in there.” If Quinn tried for reassuring, he missed the mark by a mile. It might have made more of an impression if it had come from someone like Bonanno or, hell, even Sterling, and not Quinn, who made no secret of the fact that he occasionally killed people for money.

“Y’all keep saying that, but I know the statistics. First twenty-four hours is critical. After that…”

“No!” Quinn pushed away from the table and crossed the space between them in big steps. His hand curled around Hardison’s wrist where he reached for the bottle again. “That doesn’t apply here. Stop thinking in civilian terms, Hardison. Focus. Get a grip on your fear and your head back in the game. 

This ain’t a ransom case! Marx wants information and he’s gonna go about it in a certain way.”

Over his shoulder, on the big screen, right under the damning timer, four men grinned into the camera in front of sand-colored barracks, the sky above their heads far too blue. 

Vance rested his elbow comfortably on Eliot’s shoulder.

“They  _ want _ to keep him alive, Hardison. They think they still have about 50 hours until someone even starts missing him.”

“Vance is some big number in anti-terror. CIA or DIA or Homeland Security. Not even I have been able to pin it down and man, have I been looking,” Hardison admitted softly, more spilling random info as his thoughts drifted through it than adding to whatever Quinn said. The picture. Washington. Shelley “I am married to the Constitution”. Eliot. ‘You didn’t sign up for this.’

“Marx earned his spurs with him,” Quinn gently goaded him on. “This is the handbook he’s working off.”

“Wow…” Blinking Quinn’s dark eyes back into focus Hardison grimaced. “I am  _ not _ sure that’s comforting, because man…”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s our best option. And Eliot knows how to handle it.” His voice softened ever so slightly. “He’s tough. He’ll be fine.”

They sat and stared, Quinn’s hand a forgotten weight around Hardison’s wrist, grounding him like Eliot’s hands on his shoulders sometimes did, pulled his thought back into tight focus. 

“Marx has a myriad of small properties all over the Western US. And half of them under employee names. It’s like searching for the needle in the haystack while having no idea what the needle looks like. And for the truck? Not moved an inch! I have a lot of loose information but no context. It’s like entering a generic search term in Google. No matter how sophisticated my engine… it will always return a million hits.”

Quinn hummed in agreement, staring at the screen. “You could make the haystack smaller.” 

Just a random thought until the moment he shot up straight. “Sonofabitch…” 

His head whipped around, narrow eyes scanning the screen before they zeroed in on Hardison “How fast can you have stuff delivered?” 

Hardison, first of all, took a swig of soda, calming his wild heartbeat with a generous helping of sugar, then he turned and faced the weird subject change.

“That’s entirely depending on whatcha need…”

“Socks, underwear, suit shirts, XL.” Quinn tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Those are for me. I only packed for three days.”

He let his fingers knock gently against the table as he counted down his shopping list, not waiting for Hardison’s very appropriate complaint. 

“Thermal underwear, three sets of cargos and zipped hoodies size L. No wait, make that XL. Ten MREs. Two gas cartridges. Five self-heating heat packs and five pocket warmers. Two military grade sleeping bags. A Northface Thermoball jacket size XL. A medium-sized first aid kit.” 

He turned to Hardison who stared at him with his eyebrows raised and fingers hovering over the keyboard. Quinn’s lips quirked up. “A machete and a FoodSaver.”

Hardison blinked. “A machete and a FoodSaver… Of course. That it?”

“Can you do it?”

“Yeah man… I can do it. But  _ why _ ?”

Quinn dropped back onto the couch. “Your problem is not the needle, it’s the haystack. You are looking at this with your eyes, from the city and that’s a lot of straw. He has had months to prepare this. 

This is how you hide a mark in a mass of people: you create as many similarly looking distractions as possible while you vanish off to the sidelines.

Think about it, Marx needs to account for three factors:  Eliot, who is nearly impossible to contain, to begin with. And who he wants to interrogate. Which might get loud and messy.” They both made a face.  “Parker, who can get into basically any place she wants, no matter how high or well guarded. And, most importantly, you.”

“Alright, boyfriend…” Hardison lowered his hands into his lap, tilting his head and all his attention at Quinn, “you have my interest.”  

“You tried to find him, right? With your facial recognition and cameras and...whatever you do.” He gestured at the notebook, helpless in the cute way of hitters whenever they were presented with the intricacies of digital life.

“Yeah, man, I tried that,” Hardison snarked. “I mean, I know their favorite bars by now, but no suspicious movements in any of Marx’s building, not even his office… My software’s still running and sometimes it takes a little longer, but...“ 

“How long  _ should  _ it have taken you?” Quinn leaned closer.

Hardison shuffled a few variables. Traffic cams. The availability of source material on Marx’s men. 

“Depends on surveillance density…A few hours, maybe a day or two. A single movement doesn’t make a pattern but I can cross reference with Marx’s properties and with my facial recognition software…So, it might still turn up something, but if you can get in and Marx takes you to where they have him it’ll be…” 

He snapped his jaw shut and jerked his laptop closer to call up a map of Oregon and Washington. “Unless I don’t get any hits at all… Seriously? They know they cannot beat me in a city so they what? Dropped him on Mt. Hood?”

He glanced out the window as if he could see it looming in the distance from here. 

Quinn shrugged. “Maybe not Mt. Hood but there is a lot of forest out there and a lot of abandoned structures.”

Hardison clenched his jaw. “Forest really isn’t my strong suit.” His fingers flew over the keyboard, mumbling under his breath the whole time. “They haven’t put up wildfire cams yet. Oregon really needs to get on that. Human lookouts are too unreliable and I can’t fucking hack them! Damn!” Pushing back the laptop he bounced his back against the couch and closed his eyes. 

Quinn sat in silence before he took a deep breath. “That’s what he counted on.” his hesitation stretched a few moment before he releases the air and kept going.  “He didn’t count on it being mine.” 

The words hung between them as Hardison slowly turned, wading through the last bits of conversation and yeah, Quinn really just had dropped a piece of vital information about himself. 

“What? Strong suit?” 

Quinn shrugged and watched Hardison from the corner of his eyes. 

“He didn’t count on you at all, boyfriend.” Hardison waggled his eyebrows and rubbed his hands. 

“Alright. Write me a list. Might have to hack Amazon. And FedEx. Is 7 am delivery sufficient?”

“Should work.” Quinn already grabbed Shelley’s notepad and the pen.

“Good. And then…” He called up Marx’s financial records again, first and foremost, the tax records and that of his main employees. “Structures have ownership records. Let’s see if he can escape Alec Hardison.” He emptied the orange soda and picked another from under the table. “Fucker.”

The list was tucked under Alec’s hand, all pretty standard fare. Except for the machete. And a few non-prime items. So, he might have to send Parker shopping. 

He definitely would send Parker shopping. If only to distract her from the fact that she couldn’t do anything to help until Quinn met with Marx. 

And as if summoned, she strolled into the room, all grim determination, Shelley beside her wearing his most cynical smile on his sharp-cut lips. 

“Tommy,” he spit the name, “asks if you could come to his Portland offices tomorrow. He’s a little...busy at the moment.”

Quinn stood with a humorless huff. “Bet he is. When?”

“10am.”

“In twelve hours….” 

Hardison grabbed the list and looked up. 12:00 to the point. 


	4. Fake it til you make it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friday again :)  
> This is a chapter that was supposed to have another part but Quinn did so well that he deserved to shine on his own ;)  
> You'll understand next week. Enjoy!

They even actually managed to get some sleep. Shelley snuck out the back door around midnight after some more planning. Hardison by then had turned into a silently manic presence in the background, fueled by orange soda and anxiety. He was at a point where he resorted to sifting through the properties connected to Marx by hand. An algorithm he had whipped up had thrown out most and what was left was so remote that Hardison had to pull sources that carried DoD and NASA seals.

Quinn left him to it and closed his eyes on the couch for a power nap only to be woken four hours later from Parker’s weight dipping the couch.

“I brought loot.”

“Cool…”

"Nate and Sophie are in Dubai.” That gave him pause. Not that they hadn’t called in the two senior members but ...Dubai?

“It’s close,” she answered his unspoken question. “But not so close to connect them yet.”

He’d have snuck into the country already and laid low somewhere, waiting for whatever needed to happen. But that wasn’t the style of those two. They didn’t yet know what the game was but their game-pieces moved into place.

“Tell me ‘bout the loot.”

 

The dots on Hardison’s map had whittled down to less than a dozen and his posture had deteriorated to something resembling the hunchback of Notre Dame.

It took both Quinn and Parker to get him to lie down and let his computers do the work for him while they prepared the op.

Parker looked after him, everything Quinn had asked for earlier and a few things he hadn’t strewn around them.

“He gonna sleep?”

Parker snorted with a sad, crooked little smile. “Laptop next to the bed.” Then she poked the FoodSaver and her smile bloomed into something genuine and just a little bit weird. “I like that thing. That is clever. You are clever. I’ll need an underwater con to see if it works there, too.”

Quinn laughed a little, watching her vacuum seal a pair of thermo underwear.

“Whatever you say, girlfriend.” Laughing felt good.

“It’s good you’re here. You’re like us. Me and Eliot us. You will do whatever you need to bring him home.”

In the heavy silence, Quinn’s answer sounded like a solemn vow and not like the matter of fact statement he had wanted it to be. “I will.”

“Good. Here’s Sophie’s grifting tips 101….”

 

~~~

 

The next morning dawned with perfectly normal Portland weather. Foggy, bordering on rain.

It blanketed the whole city into a dreamy shroud fitting everybody’s mood.

He threw together some scrambled eggs for breakfast and they ran through the con again until Parker declared him as ready as he could be and Hardison worked his techno magic to make it as foolproof as possible

“Social engineering, baby. I made your friend’s number just a shade darker than the rest. Marx won’t see it, but his brain will pick it out as if it were his momma’s birth date.’

“Not a friend.”

“Excuse me, Quinn’s acquaintance who once accidentally screwed him over and owes him a huge favor but is not a friend and will give Marx a few numbers to call if he wants references.”

Dylan, one of Shelley’s men, posed as a coffee addicted grad student in the Starbucks down the block from Marx’s office, more for Parker’s sake than Quinn’s, after she had declared that she was not about to lose him too. Nate Ford and Sophie Devereaux sat with their phones at the ready in case Marx swallowed the bait and wanted to examine Quinn’s credentials.

Hardison had electronic surveillance on every inch of this corner of Portland. And that included one of his magic coms in Quinn’s ear.

 

He parked in front of one of several non-descript start-up buildings clustered just outside of the city center, and got out of the car.

 

Quinn hadn’t come here with the expectation of finding a light-filled, spacious office with a young secretary smiling at him from behind a good mahogany imitation desk. Now, sitting in a comfortable armchair, thumbing idly through a prospect advertising Secu Tech’s services, he had to give it to the man: it was effective. Impress customers and intimidate potential employees had been done with a lot less style and a lot more tackiness before.

The temptation to idly drop one of the bugs he was carrying under the seat nagged at the back of Quinn’s head, but even without Hardison’s soft warning in his ear, he was pretty sure that he was being watched by more than the smiling secretary.

“Shelley already warned me that you’d be notoriously easy to work with.”

Quinn looked up from his resting slouch, at the man marching down the carpeted corridor with the distinct tap-swoosh of a crippled knee.

He checked his watch. Eight minutes late. “I don’t believe in workplace drama, Mr. Marx. You’re a busy man. I come to you as a beggar and business supersedes favors to friends any day.”

Pushing up from the armchair, Quinn unfolded his 6’ plus frame with all the casual power his body was capable of and smiled his coldest smile. 

“Julien Martin. I think we will find each other useful.”

“Will we now?” 

Marx’s eyes narrowed as he took the proffered hand in a firm grip. A little gun rough, or maybe a cane. He wore his suit without a tie, Quinn noticed as they stared at each other, and the few silver hairs at his temples with a lot of character. He was around Eliot’s age but showed barely any laugh lines around his eyes. Fewer scars, too.

He might have looked soft, if not for the striking depth of his hazel eyes and the fine lines that bracketed his mouth and that deepened as he pulled it into a sardonic smirk. 

“I like your bracelets.” 

Quinn had almost showed up with his hair ties still wrapped around his wrist. He’d changed it to a wide leather band at the last moment to hide the coiled wire he wore for emergencies. 

“Thank you. I find a man sure of himself should never be shy to show so with the appropriate jewelry.” He squeezed Marx’s hand, showing just a promise of his strength before he let go, allowing the man to establish a pecking order from the get-go. 

Marx was still watching him, but his smile as he turned to limp down the hallway had turned much less blandly polite. “Jess, no phone calls. I am in a meeting.”

Jess nodded and Parker crowed in Quinn’s ear. “Oh, nice. You’ve been upgraded from favor to meeting! Well done.”  And while he didn’t need her praise, he wasn’t a dog, knowing that she and the others were there in his ear felt a lot like a safety net, something he usually sorely lacked, even if it doubled as peanut gallery in their case.

 

 

The thick carpet stretched past the corridor and into Marx’s office, just as spacious and light-filled, with bullet proof mirror glass on the windows and an expensive coffee machine. This mahogany desk was real.

“Au lait?” he asked and Quinn smiled.

“S’il vous plaît. Merci.” 

“Hard habit to shake?” 

Marx watched him with amusement in his eyes while programming the coffee machine. Like a joke only he was in on and not a blatantly obvious attempt to get Quinn to slip into French.  Waiting for the machine, he leaned against the sideboard instead of sitting behind his desk, making a point to stand even as he curled his bad leg in ever so slightly to ease the weight on it. 

“Well,” Quinn mirrored Marx’s position, message received and understood. “I had a layover in Brussels. Didn’t exactly help.” 

“Endless country hopping. The joys of Europe, hm?” 

“Doesn’t look like I’ll have to deal with that for a while. Can’t say I’ll miss drafty warehouses and lousy vodka.” Quinn took his coffee, topped it off with warm, foamed milk, and took a sip, following a laughing Marx to sit at the desk.

“Yes, Shelley said as much. Though you are not quite what I expected.” 

He motioned Quinn over, from the combat boots to his dark gray suit, chosen for its perfectly neutral quality, to his military short hair.

“I expected someone more...martial.”

“Oh, I am plenty martial if the need arises,” Quinn gently placed the cup on the desk with barely a sound and leaned back, posture open, chin up, eyes on Marx, “but I make it a point to be flexible and adapt to the job.”

Before Marx answered, Hardison spoke up. “Alright, someone just broke into your car,” Hardison murmured. “Operation ‘please use this virus carrying Flash drive’ version A is a go.”

“Is that so? And what would you call your areas of special expertise, Monsieur Martin? Shelley mentioned you had anti-terror training with the GCP and that you work freelance. He did not say much else.”

Quinn made it a point to move slowly as he opened his suit jacket, revealing he was carrying before he reached into the inner pocket of his suit, for the Flash drive nestled there and for the plain sheet of paper that contained a neat list of four names and phone numbers. All of them were real contacts he had; someone like Marx wouldn’t fall for fakes, he knew the business too well, but all of them operated outside the US with Fevrier in Quebec being the closest. Hardison believed that they’d get Marx to use the landline rather than his cellphone that way, and, seeing Marx’s eyes flick to the desk phone after one glance at the country codes, Quinn allowed himself a moment to doubt any of his past interactions with team Leverage.

“The stick contains a detailed write up of my skills. As for the note... you should recognize the names,” he said, following the loose script they had set up, watching as Marx unerringly locked onto the second name. “They will be able to give you all the references you need, Mr. Marx.”

“I will have a look at it. In the meantime, let’s cut the chase. We both know that you do not work personal security.”

Marx scrutinized him with a shrewd glint in his eye and a cruel smile curling his lips. A test then. Quinn lifted a corner of his mouth and waited him out.

“What will you not do, Julien?”

_‘Don’t let him make you do things that you can’t.’ Parker had looked at him, back in the apartment, sitting between half packed bags of clothing, happy like a child one moment and in the next... ‘Moreau did that to Eliot. Say no. We’ll find a way. We always do.’_

Quinn had almost told her that there was nothing he didn’t do, but that was a lie. There were a few things he didn’t do; he had just built his network so that he didn’t get offered these jobs anymore. The contacts he worked with knew when to call and what jobs not to relay, even if someone had requested Quinn specifically. It made him a little hard to find, indeed, but exclusivity bred reputation and reputation tended to end in higher payments, so nobody complained.

Killing an innocent to get to Eliot fell under the things that grazed along a line he tried not to cross too much and had avoided altogether since Washington. Fact was, though? He would.

“Two things. First: Arson. There are many really talented arsonists out there. I just happen to not be one of them.” Quinn rubbed his mouth. “The other? Children.”

Marx blinked exactly once, tilted his head and frowned. “Conscientious objection?”

Parker breathed a little louder, Hardison mumbled something intelligible and Shelley wasn’t audible at all.

Across from him, Marx picked up a black pen, the expensive kind that CEOs used and that was way above paygrade for someone who had an office in a building with tax counselors, startups and family lawyers. He scrutinized Quinn like he already knew the verdict and it was guilty.

Of having a conscience or trying to lie, no matter what he said.

Quinn shrugged.

“Mostly practical, actually. Dead children draw a great amount of unforgiving attention. Also, in my experience, people who resort to killing children have lost control of the situation. And out of control situations are bad if they happen on my side of a job. Aside from that, yes, I am not fond of it, either.”

They stared at each other, Marx tapped the pen onto his leather desk pad once, then he nodded.

“How about interrogation?”

“Here we go, baby,” Hardison crooned.

“That depends.” Quinn tilted his head and brought his fingers together, watching every one of Marx’s moves with keen interest, now that he so unexpectedly had opened the door. “Are we talking torture or interrogation…No.” He smiled his best bad boy smile. “Forget I said that. Yes, to both. And I know the difference.”

Marx’s nostrils flared, trying hard to keep the emotions off his face except his eyes shifted to the right just so. Parker, if she were here, would jump up and down yelling ‘a tell, a tell’ as if she hadn’t hammered a whole encyclopedia of them into his brain this morning.

 

_“Just think of it like seducing people.” Her shrug, like her words, had looked properly learned by heart._

_“Do_ you _think of it as seducing people?” he had shot back and gotten a happy grin from her for picking that up._

_“No. It’s like safe cracking. You push the right buttons and they open up. But you’re more the seducing type.”_

 

As if on cue, she spoke up in his ear, her voice almost a carbon copy of Sophie Devereaux. “Get him. He wants you. Now show him that he can have you. Make him feel lucky that you are here.”

Quinn folded his hands and smiled. “That is a very specific question, Mr. Marx. Unless… you have a specific job in mind?”

Marx’s gaze dipped to the note and the Flash drive, tapping the plastic with a thoughtful frown. 

“Tell you what, Julien. I will check this out. You go and get a cup of coffee and in an hour we meet back here and talk about the difference between torture and interrogation. How’s that sound?”

Quinn stood slowly and straightened his jacket. “I am glad to be working with professionals again. That’s what it sounds like.” His grin came naturally. “I assume there’s a Starbucks around here somewhere?”

Marx rubbed the flash drive between thumb and index finger, lips twitching as he pointed to the door. “Jess will fill you in.”

He had almost reached the door when Marx’s voice held him back. “What exactly is it that Shelley thinks you are doing, Julien?”

Quinn looked over his shoulder without bothering to turn. “I’m an independent contractor, Mr. Marx. The question is not what kind of work I do but for _whom_. Shelley believes in the constitution. I believe in a job well done.” He shrugged. “And well paid.”

 

 ~~~

 

He walked through the last remnants of morning mist, following Jess’ description to a T and trying his damnest not to let his tail know he knew where the Starbucks was.

 Once there, he ordered himself a coffee latte and a double chocolate chip cookie and spent 30 minutes trying to figure out which of the hipsters was Shelley's man, and trying to follow the op through second-hand messages on com and Parker’s SMS.

 

~~~

 

When he returned to the office, Jess simply waved him through. He found Marx idly turning in his office chair, staring out the windows with steepled fingers, and didn’t bother suppressing a little grin.

“What is the job?” he asked before he had fully settled and opened his suit jacket.

Marx eyed him, meeting Quinn’s raised eyebrow with an impassive stare before he seemed to come to a conclusion.

“Any good businessman knows that the core for success is to delegate. You have your people that maybe lack vision, but make up for it with charm, with diligence, with organizational talent. You have to value them, respect them. Like any good asset, you need to give them what they need to thrive in your business. Because good branch managers are hard to come by.“

Someone over coms made a confused noise. And Quinn himself didn’t quite understand the game yet, but that was alright: he was a staunch proponent of fake it til you make as a viable survival strategy.

“And you are looking for… another branch manager?”

Not one: another. Marx didn’t meddle in small business anymore. Hardison had hinted as much. Having spent time with the guy and compared him to a lot of small and big names in the business…

“I am in a little predicament, Julien.

I have someone in a position that he is not at all suited for. See, I am in the middle of something… vital to my business interests. And I need information. 

Sadly, the man with the information is notoriously uncooperative.” Marx tapped on his injured knee in an absent-minded gesture. 

“I have someone on the job. Reimann. I acquired him from Damien Moreau’s organization after it went down. A good deal. Sadly, though he thinks he’s hot stuff, he has a very narrow field of use. One I try not to dabble in too often.”

“Benjamin Reimann, 33,” Hardison’s voice spit out the information in his no-nonsense on-the-job voice, layering over Marx’s like a machine. “got kicked out of the German KSK for being a Neo-Nazi and for massive misconduct in 03. Made a name as mercenary and got picked up by Moreau in 05. He can fight alright but mostly, oh... he tortures.”

Quinn blinked slowly. Not a real reaction; he wasn’t really surprised. To Hardison Moreau was a nebulous evil, like something out of his fantasy games where good and evil existed in more than just philosophical context and Eliot, like a knight from those very same games, made sure it stayed that way. Quinn, on the other hand, could barely remember a time when had believed in good, to begin with.

Marx knew nothing of that or the voice in Quinn's ear.

“I need an enforcer. Intelligent. Unscrupulous. Professional. Someone who can deal with more than just business as usual.” His eyes, still deep with woodland colors, zeroed in on Quinn, and there was no mistaking the cruelty in their depths. “And I need a pansy to take the fall from this little gig. Our mark has very opinionated friends”

“Well,” this was, for the first time, Shelley’s voice. “I’d say we left an impression.”

Quinn ignored him, though not without a smile that he quickly let turn icy.

“You want me to extract the information, sacrifice Reimann and then, after I have proven myself, you’ll give me his job?”

Marx pursed his lips, taking his sweet time to dissect the words. “No. I want you to get the information, set Reimann up in any way possible and if that’s well done and I like your work, you might get Reimann’s job. If you succeed but it’s sloppy and unreliable, you won’t. But you will get paid.”

He picked up the pen to scribble down a number and something else on a post it. 

“Depending on how you do, we will work together again. Shelley recommended you, so I trust that you are reliable and discrete. Everything else, we will see if it works out for us.”

He smiled. “But I like how you present yourself. Impeccable work record. Not someone who forces himself into the limelight, but you get the job done. And even if you don’t yet have every qualification I might need in the long run… Reimann has finished his growth process. He will never be more than he is now. You, though?”

His smile broadened.

Quinn heard Parker gasp softly through the com. “But you’re ours!” as he stared at Marx, trying to assess how much of that cool, businesslike exterior was a front. People like this, self-styled businessmen trying to get their feet onto the ground in the underworld, he had met more than once already. And he had never been tempted by their grand tales, the fronts too brittle to hold any promise. Yet here he sat, looking at Marx…

Their eyes met over the desk, Quinn’s flitting for a second to the post-it that he saw lurking just under the palm of Marx’s hand.

“And if I don’t want to?” he asked, even if the question was purely hypothetical in any case. A test to gauge Marx’s sanity, perhaps, or the way he conducted business.

“Then we will part amicably, I hope. With the potential of future business relationships on contract basis. Would that be agreeable to you?”

Sometimes, especially in the days after Washington, when Quinn had grabbed his bag and hightailed it out of the city, leaving a foiled attack and a man with two bullet holes behind to be cared for by his ‘business’ partners, he had asked himself what would have happened if Eliot had said no in Hurghada. If he hadn’t looked at him in the red glow of the sunset with a smile that crinkled his eyes, and put his beer down to drag Quinn out of the chair and towards the bed with a half drunken laugh. 

If Eliot had not shrugged like it didn’t matter and teased Quinn to go slow because it had been a while.

How long, Quinn had asked, and not expected an answer, just continued to touch all that tightly coiled power held together by scars and attitude and principles. 

But Eliot had answered. With a name. And for one blinding moment of clarity, Quinn had understood. The scars, the attitude, the principles. And he had _known._

 

Now, he let the smile settle on his face and the cold calculation in his eyes, hands folded easily in front of his chest. “What terms did you have in mind?”

Marx handed him the note. On one side he had scribbled a sizeable sum. On the other, a name.

Quinn folded the note with careful fingers and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket He smiled.

“What are we after?”


	5. The Tangled Web

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Against all other expectations... especially by me... I managed to post today. I wanted to make it better but work hit me so hard this week, you'll have to wait til next week. Blame my job ;)
> 
> Additional chapter warnings: Torture, medicinal drugs, betrayal. 
> 
>  
> 
> My biggest thanks to BurningTea who has been an invaluable help.  
> Thank you!  
> And thanks to everybody who comments... you keep me going :)
> 
> That said: My apologies to all involved. Sorry Eliot. Sorry Quinn. 
> 
> Enjoy :D

_A gust of moist, almost freezing air whipped over his body. So cold. He woke with a start and tore his injured shoulder from the icy ground. Dislocated. Reset in a butcher shop job. Pressed to the cold floor until the muscles had locked stiff. Dizzy, too. Great._

_Looking up, he found the darkness of an endless sky beyond the hole in the ground. Alaska._

_Parker snorted behind him and Hardison chuckled. “Unless you know another place that cold… pretty much, yeah.”_

_He knew a few: the Afghan mountains could pack some serious punch in that regard but he wasn’t about to discuss that with them in a dream._

_Or with Quinn, leaning against the pier railing, feet crossed at the ankles and hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks as if that made him look any less of a threat. He tilted his head and looked down with a sheepish smile as Parker shoved Eliot forward._

_“Go,” she said and Hardison laughed at the expression Eliot made over his shoulder, no choice but to growl in the face of their nonchalance, desperate to make them understand._

_“I don’t want to leave you!”_

_He hadn’t expected Parker to recoil or Hardison to frown in the face of his anger, confusion written over both their faces. “You’re not leaving us, silly. He’s gonna bring you back!”_

_“Yeah, man,” Hardison turned his tablet with that wry grin, just this side of confidence peeking into arrogance. “We’ll know where you’re at the whole time.”_

He missed the sound of the door opening. He started awake at the bang of it closing.

The movement tore at his various points of hurt, his shoulder, his right hand, broken ribs. Two.

They’d have to be more careful with the beatings. Went too far too soon. No use killing him to soften him up.

Air stuttered into the vise around his chest, deeper, deeper until dots sparked in front of his eyes. The feeling set all his nerves alight, the controlled ripple of a current dancing through his body, a painful prickle against the bindings holding his hands, morphing into a dull pull against his shoulder muscles and lower down his back and stomach where it transformed into warmth, into the illusion of pressure against his skin, not quite pain anymore, not when he controlled it.

A few minutes, then he’d have to stretch his knees. Prolonged stress positions caused edemas.

He needed to move before they put him back into the cell, or he wouldn’t be able to move later.

Eliot averaged sixty-five heartbeats a minute. He’d counted 90023 of them in the cold and dark.

Then too bright lights, pain, more darkness. Rough cloth covering his eyes as Reimann broke his fingers. One. Two. A fingernail.

That guy had always been a blunt instrument, a sledgehammer where a chisel might’ve… might’ve…

Stop.

Breath. Hold. Release.

Rough wood rubbed against his naked back and arms, wrist and ankles both bound by leather.

And cold. Too cold to shiver.  
He rolled his head back to open his airways. No use in dying yet.

They’d never forgive him.

They’d want him back. And if he didn’t get out by himself… they’d wade right in.

 

“Reimann... “ Sardonic drawl, a soldier’s steps. Eliot’s breath almost stuttered. “Wow. I see you went all out. He’s half dead already and it’s only been twenty-five hours.”

Aluminum screeched over bare concrete as Reimann shot out of his chair. Jerking steps moved to the right towards the newcomer.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is _my_ prisoner.” Reimann’s sharp German accent caught on the last word.

“Ours now, my friend. Julien Martin. Pleasure. Mr. Marx suggests a combined approach on this one. ”

The new voice huffed, moving behind Eliot, heavy boots beating out a steady rhythm. Almost sixty-five beats. “What’d you give him, Midazolam?”

A finger, a gentle finger, rough and calloused, pressed against Elliot’s neck, right above his atlas vertebra.  

Breathe. Don’t care. Pain is temporary. Pain is your friend. Don’t care.

94207 heartbeats.

“Did you just…?” Reimann sputtered, charging forward, but the voice held him back.

“He’s out of it. Look at him. He won’t remember. Congratulations. Found the right one on your first try. If this is your first try.” 

Linen-wool fabric in a tight weave rustled. Heavy-soled combat boots crunched softly on concrete as the new voice crouched in front of him.

The fingers curled unbelievably gently around Eliot’s cheek, warm and alive over the pain of a fractured cheekbone.

“Eliot Spencer…”

Honey dripping on skin, sleepy eyes opening slowly to the first cup of coffee in the morning, wonder, raucous laughter, stuttering breaths in the dark.

“Look at you. My friend Reimann did a number on you, hm? And all over a stupid crate of loot. I thought you’d be more clever. As if somebody cared but your own stupid pride.”

Taunting smugness tainted the idea of his lover’s warmth. The hand fell away.

_“That rib’s broken.”_

Eliot ground his teeth to keep the words in. Swallow the pain. Pain is temporary. Pain fades.

_I work for money, El. Boy’s gotta live._

“For your information, non-threatening injuries are used to heighten the impact of other interrogation methods, Martin. You can’t just waltz in here…,” Reimann snarled.

“Oh, so you _do_ know what you’re doing. Some of the guys had their doubts.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. They won’t talk anymore when we break him.” A heavy hand caressed the broken fingers. Eliot growled. “Torture hurts them. Nothing more. To make them talk, you need fear.”

“Fearing pain can be a great motivator.” Rough cloth, jeans, scraped against metal and glass of the room’s door. Arms folded.

“For Eliot Spencer?” The newcomer laughed, laughed like he knew a great secret. Like he knew how to take him down.

“I caught him, Martin. That’s more than you ever did!”

“True. Look at him… ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings…’”

The hand shifted, wandered up Eliot’s arm to his right shoulder, brushed softly over the swollen flesh. A promise that he might dig his fingers in any time… and didn’t.

Eliot drew a painful chug of air into his lungs as he allowed his chin to drop to his chest and closed his eyes behind the blindfold.

“‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair…’”

“What does that even mean?” Reimann asked, incredulity dripping from his voice. The poem stopped.

But in Eliot’s mind it went on, and the memory that came with it.

 

_Shelley sat on the floor, back against his bunk. “C’mon, I know exactly what you chose. And you’re wrong, Eliot. You’re so wrong.”_

_“There is_ nothing _wrong with it.”_

_“Not with a bang but with a whimper? Oh please.” He grabbed the book from his bed and threw it at Eliot’s head with a wild grin._

_Eliot caught it with barely a glance._

_“Says the man who chose ‘Ozymandias’”_

_“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Shelley laughed._

_Eliot pointed his fingers at him and glared. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re embarrassing.”_

_“Oh Eliot, you can’t just pick the most dreary piece of crap you can find. This is your name…”_

_“Don’t you-”_

_“Your ineffable effable; Effanineffable; deep and inscrutable singular Name.”_

_“I hate you, man. I hate you so much.”_

_“No, you don’t. When you’re in real trouble and you hear ‘My name is Ozymandias!’ then you’ll tell me that you love me.”_

 

“It means that things change, Reimann. Every giant falls. Everyone breaks. With the right trigger. It’s cute that you think Eliot Spencer’s is violence.”

The boots creaked over the concrete as he walked away, drawing Reimann with him.

“What did you have planned next? Water?”

Reimann seemed to ponder that as he strolled out of the room and then, instead of more complaints, surprised with an actual answer. “Electricity first. Then water.” He grinned. “Then both. The slow build up is the trick.”

“Hrm… not bad. I can work with that.” Quinn drawled as he closed the door. “So, let’s work this one together. I get paid and you get the glory...and the pay”

Eliot flexed his broken fingers.

_Nothing besides remains…_

Marx.

_Round the decay of that colossal wreck…_

Shelley.

Somewhere in the back of his brain, a door opened, spilling disconnected facts into the dulled fog of his mind. A few more minutes and he’d get clearer. Faster. Midazolam… everybody and their uncle had developed a tolerance to Midazolam.

But Reimann had never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

Behind the greasy, bloody veil of his hair, Eliot’s lips curled into what might have been a smile.

_The lone and level sands stretch far away._

Quinn.

 

~~~

 

When the phone on the table beeped Hardison sprinted across the room, but he knew he’d lose to Parker rappelling from the beams before he’d even crossed half the distance.

He’d been busy setting up secure connections for Nate and Sophie whereas Parker probably had done nothing but wait for this one sound.

She had. Her feet dangling safely above the floor, she held up the phone and announced with palpable relief: “They’re alive!” Only to add with a faint, brittle quality to her voice: “I was right…”

That was the moment Hardison reached her and snatched the phone from her hand to read it for himself. He needed to read it for himself. _“I’m in. He’s alive.”_

 

On the screens behind him, a big red dot had joined the five crosses that marked possible locations - the point where they had lost connection to Quinn shortly after he had met up with one of Marx’s men in a roadside diner near the foot of Mt. Hood.  

His com hadn’t come online again. Neither had the smartphone. The only sign that he hadn’t been killed and ditched somewhere in the woods had been the occasional blip from his sturdy little burner phone, built for endurance and reception basically anywhere.

Parker unhooked her rig and landed with the grace of a cat in front of Hardison, even if there was nothing graceful about the lines of worry on her face.

That worry had been nagging at her for the past hours, ever since Quinn had met with Marx and they had a feeling for what they were dealing with. It had not, though, extended to Quinn when he’d vanished from their radar and had Hardison not known how much she liked the mercenary, he’d have called it cold or callous, instead…

“How’d you know? About Quinn?”

Parker shrugged and let the rig drop to the floor with that air around her that always held her a little aloof, detached from the fallacies of mortal existence and the annoying need of actual information.

“Quinn’s like me. He’s fine.”

And that...he hadn’t expected at all.

“He’s moving between people,” she explained. “You and Nate and Sophie, you’re all moving _with_ people. Like you’re holding hands and form a net and when you fall, someone catches you. I mean, they also hold you back but they also catch you.

 _Quinn_ , he moves in between. When Quinn falls, he has to save himself. He knows how.You have to.” She shrugged.

“Not anymore, babe. Not for quite a while. You got us now.”

“I know,” she admitted around a tiny little smile that tugged at her lips. It never bloomed into a full smile, faltered halfway through as her eyes shifted away from Hardison’s face, past his shoulder and far away.

“Sometimes,” she began slowly, “When you’re falling, even if you’re good, you’ll land wrong and you hurt yourself.”

“Like when you tore your ACL?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Her eyes flicked to him and away. “Or you have to hold on to something and you scratch your hands… you keep doing what you do, it just…”

Her fingers twitched upwards. Just an inch and dropped again, reeled into the tightly controlled space that she kept around her body.

The exact opposite to Alec, cautious and tightly coiled in all her gestures where he was big and, well, big.

“It hurts,” he filled in the blanks.

She nodded, her gaze dropping to the phone in his hand.

“He didn’t say Eliot is ok.”

“I know, baby… but he didn’t say he isn’t ok either.”

“He only got Eliot. I got you. _And_ Eliot. And Nate and Sophie and Amy and Peggy.”

Maybe Quinn had a whole battery of siblings, like a secret Mormon clan all named Quinn sitting somewhere, waiting for him to come home and have cake with him. Hardison didn’t know.

Because Eliot had been adamant about not checking him out past the most basic and obvious ‘following Quinn across the world to check up _on_ him’.

Nobody was born being named Quinn, nobody moved like this and hit people like this without some serious background.

But whenever Hardison had tried to get fingerprints from Eliot’s stuff after one of their weekend meetings, everything had been meticulously wiped clean… by _Eliot._

“He got us, babe. Boy just don’t know it yet.”

That Quinn used SMS to contact them could mean a lot of things. Couldn’t talk, no time, no connection.

“He still owes me a mountain,” Parker grumped past one of those smiles that made Hardison feel like he was 8 feet tall, with wings on his back and a blood-drenched battle axe in his hands. “One you can’t just walk up to.”

Hardison pulled his tablet closer on the briefing table and called up one of his tracing programs.

“Where you at?’ he typed, waiting to hit the send button until he had a lock on the message to follow it through the mysterious world of data transfer. (The boring world of semi-well secured phone provider data.)

He watched it ping easily through the first relays and then….ping back...and ping back and ping back.

It took five tries until the delivered message finally appeared on his screen and this… wouldn’t do...at all.

“We need connection. I need to steal us a satellite. Brb.”

He didn’t complete his turn to the screens, caught by a strong hand and pulled back around until he met the wide-blown eyes of the least stress affected person he knew.

“He’s alive,” she whispered, clutching Hardison’s sweater in a death grip, her lips parted on small, choppy breaths.

Parker didn’t do terrified, she just didn’t. Some days she barely did emotion. But then there were the days when emotions just happened and she forgot how to deal with them because she had no blueprint for this...this specific situation.

Eliot hurt. Eliot in danger and out of their reach. And now Quinn.

Hardison remembered Alaska and both Eliot and Parker suddenly vanishing from coms. The most terrifying seconds of life, worse even than Washington and the flu because for a few moments he’d known he lost them.

He reached out and brushed her hair behind her ear.

Fine blond strands curled around his fingers as he pressed a hand to the back of her head and enveloped her in the safety of his bigger body and arms. She needed that sometimes, blocking the world from her thoughts to bring her thoughts into an order she could deal with.

And if she needed that, he’d provide it, emulating to the best of his ability what Eliot did by just being here. Giving her the strength to deal with whatever she needed to get their … Eliot back.

The phone beeped and rattled where he’d dropped it onto the briefing table. Minutes after the message had been received.

No, that wouldn’t do.

Parker heaved a sigh. “You need to get that.”

“I know.” Neither of them made an immediate move. And then she started to shuffle backwards in tiny steps, her arms not giving an ounce of her vise-like grip around Hardison’s middle.

She stopped in comfortable grabbing distance, her face still pressed into Hardison’s chest and despite everything, he smiled at the casual display of her quasi-supernatural body sense.

‘Location B’

Hardison showed Parker and she lifted her head long enough to take note and nod.

No surprise there.

With the direction they had taken Quinn, only two location had been left.

An old ranger station near a campground on one of the lakes dotting the foothills of Mount Hood or a closed down shooting range with a big hillside areal that once had been used as a wildlife archery training ground.

“Can you steal them a satellite there?” She turned her head and stared at the map, brow creased in sharp concentration.

“For a while. Yeah. And then I need to steal another. The hillside's shadow's gonna be a problem.”

Parker hummed softly. Hummed again, her head tilting slowly and even from that awkward a position he saw her eyes flicker over the screens with a speed too fast to follow the jumps her mind took, shuffling pieces around a board and suddenly boom, done.

“Can you put something on the hill and go downwards without Marx’s guys noticing?”

Hardison changed their map to 3D topographical.

“I can… problem? It’s too wet up there for electronics. I can try to build something. Maybe like a box. Use some of Eliot’s Tupperware containers. Just don’t tell him. You know…’That for food, not for toys’ You know how he gets.”

“Oh…” Tilting her head back to look at him, her arms giving no inch, she bit her lip and then broke into a twinkling grin. “We’ll just vacuum them! C’mon. I need to drop off Quinn’s packages, too.”

She pushed away from him with a big dancing step and grabbed the phone from his fingers as she went, aiming straight for Quinn’s FoodSaver.

‘Stick to plan. We got you.’

 

~~~

 

There was a door outside this room, heavy, fire safety, metal. It led to the left and potentially outside. Maybe upstairs.

There were two doors to the right. Both safety doors. One led to his cell. The other to a corridor, short and drafty, potentially outside.

There was a third door up ahead. Wooden. Light. Shower. That one he knew for sure. Not sure if the cold water was by design or cruelty. He didn’t care much either way.

And this room. Big enough that steps echoed. Bare concrete, permeated by the bitter tang of cordite and metal. No blood. Except his own. This whole operation had been set up only for him, not for Parker, not for Hardison. Him.

Good.

Eliot breathed softly as the left door opened. Hold. Release. Shift the weight on his cramped thighs with the way he sat in the chair. Stretch his knees slowly into the pain.

Pain is good. Welcome the pain.

“Have you done this before?” Reimann’s voice cut in over the opening door.

99378.

Quinn’s heavier footsteps stopped as he was about to walk into the interrogation room.

“You’re joking, right? I prepared that thing. So where do you want it? Thigh? Knees? Elbow? Neck?” He circled Eliot’s chained body... fingers scratching over glass... the barely audible pop of a plastic cap pulled off a needle.

“But maybe you won’t have to hold him down for this, hm? Maybe our friend is reasonable. Makes this easy?” Heavy fingers threaded into Eliot’s hair, grabbed a fistful and _jerked_ back his head.

Quinn knew how to hold him without pain, how much of a fistful felt good and when it became too much. Quinn knew how much to give when Eliot jerked his head away to keep it on this side from agony.

Quinn had a thing for Eliot’s hair.

Reiman didn’t. He dug his hand in when Quinn’s fingers slid away and ripped Eliot’s head back, exposing his throat to the violent grab of his other hand, forcing him to still against the antiseptic swab against Eliot’s jugular.

“Easy now.” Quinn murmured in response to Eliot’s violent growl “Just a little jab.”

His fingertips caressed the exposed skin of Eliot’s throat, juxtaposing the pain of Reimann’s grip as the needle slid into the vein with the precision of a well-aimed knife.

The cold of whatever was in that syringe followed immediately.

“See? Wasn’t too bad.”

Eliot thrashed in the hold of Reimann’s hands as soon as the needle slipped free, for all the good it did him.

He knew he couldn’t get free. But he couldn’t just take it either.

Quinn’s fingers lingered, a second of warmth before they traveled down Eliot’s neck and fell away, the gesture protected by the closeness of their bodies.

“Alright. You two have fun,” he then quipped and stepped away, leaving Eliot exposed to Reimann, too close to Reimann. “Spencer, if you can’t speak, just nod. The camera will catch it, don’t worry. It’s the only IT equipment that works here after all.”

IT equipment. Hardison. Hardison didn’t work here. No voices in his ear, no stupid bickering.

He remembered the Veteran job, the interrogator that didn’t believe in torture. Because sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, humiliation… those were not torture. They were means to an end. But as long as nobody got bruised…

Tilting his head, listening closely, Eliot could hear Reimann breathing. A man that very much didn’t believe in plausible denial.

And Quinn… the ex. And the question if he knew. Or cared.

If he did, he didn’t show it. “You have five minutes before the drug kicks in. I think my food just arrived.”

Listening to him walk away, Eliot dipped his head back and stepped away, down his own heartbeat, sixty-five beats per minutes, and the slow, measured pain of deep breaths. Part of him hoped Quinn wouldn’t come back to see this, the other, a small part, stubbornly refusing to hope for things he didn’t deserve, prayed that Quinn wouldn’t leave him to face this alone.

Except, alone was how Eliot Spencer did these things.

“Hello “Commander”. Our new “friend” thinks he can talk to you nicely.” Reimann’s breath smelled of cheap beer married happily to the foul stench of unbrushed teeth, too close and far too intimate. Close and intimate was how guys like Reimann did things and the stench always stayed the same. “He wants you undamaged. You think he gets queasy with blood? Soft like you?”

Reimann’s hand moved down Eliot’s arm, using his superior position easily against the sitting man, the motion a gentle caress until he reached Eliot’s fingers and _squeezed_.  

 

Quinn came back, must’ve. There was his voice over the chatter of Eliot’s teeth, through the choke-choke-gasp of drawing breath through the muscle contractions.

Pain. Pain was good. Breathe. Clarity.

The darkness crept in, fog that didn’t care what happened. Slowed everything to a snail pace crawl.

_Midazolam is a short-acting benzodiazepine CNS depressant._

The scent of chili. The clang of metal in the kitchen. Full evening in the pub.

Slow it. Steady breaths.

Aluminum scratching over concrete as Quinn dropped into his chair. Silence.

Then: “You hooked him up to a power outlet. On his broken fingers. That’s... vile.”

“You said no more damage. I used a modulator.”

Another pause. A long one. Eliot let his head drop, rest against his chest, as if it were too heavy all of a sudden. Raised it again. Slowly.

“Queasy?” he snarled to the best of his ability, shivering, listing forward in the chair, too damn difficult, to damn useless to bother.

Quinn breathed heavily, loud enough for Eliot to hear over the sound of a takeout box opening. Plastic cutlery clinked against teeth. Chewing.

“I am unsure about the combined effect of psychoactive drugs and electroshocks. But I guess we’ll find out.”

Eliot heard the devil may care grin in his voice and almost, a little, grinned back, Reimann or no Reimann, at the fact that _someone_ had given him a sedative before torture. Then he didn’t do anything conscious anymore.

 

Of all the ways to wake... No, that was a lie. The taste of blood didn’t even rank fifth on that list. The stink of singed flesh did. The residual prickle of electricity shaking his pain-screaming hands. Contractions compressing broken ribs and wood rubbing over too sensitive skin. Palpitations. The hoarse pain of a raw throat.

When the first thought in the dark was ‘At least you’re not bound to a metal bedframe.’

Because he had been before and North Korea remained a thing he kept hoping to forget.

Curling his fingers around the armrest of the wooden chair, Eliot allowed a soft groan to escape.

Pain is good. Pain brings clarity. All pain passes.

He opened his eyes and found himself under the scrutiny of Quinn's worried gaze.  
"Back online, are we?"  
Not online. Barely alive. Not like one of Hardison's machines.  
  
Quinn looked up and ahead to the door and when he turned his head, the single lamp above them caught the dull gleam of silicone in his ear.  
"Online?" Eliot slurred. "We?"  
"You heard me right the first time, pal. Don't play dumb." He pushed up from his crouch and walked to his chair. "It doesn't suit you."

Eliot shook his head, filthy hair sticking to his face and it smelled of blood. “Q…”

Cameras. Not Quinn.

He forced his left into a tighter grip, nails digging into the wood, burns screaming, the dull pull of sore muscles. Not Quinn.

“Reimann?”

“Missing him already? I can call him back.” Quinn waved an easy hand at the door to Eliot’s back. “He’s taking a shower. Guess you got him going pretty well there, pal.”

The shudder of that thought alone, the memory of the pain. Screams echoing from the low ceiling...

“How long?” he croaked.

“You were out? Or how long has he been grilling you like a piece of well-hung meat?”

He sold it well, the laissez-faire, the second-hand sadism of someone who knew how to use a man like Reimann and use him well. Damien had done it with more style, all smiles and champagne, charm working tendrils around officials and victims, wiping his hands clean before he went to shake others.

‘I like this man,” he’d said about Hardison right after he had almost drowned him.

Quinn stretched back and his long legs out and Eliot could only imagine what Hardison… could only pray that Quinn had had the common sense to remove the earbud while Reimann worked him over.

Watching him reach under the chair that he permanently seemed to have claimed as his own, nothing in his movements looked like he cared. He came back up with a white take-out box in his hands and smiled.

“Or would you rather know what you said in the last forty minutes? Mosul, September 2003, independent contractor Eliot Spencer under the command of Michael Vance?”

Eliot’s head snapped up.

There were things in his life he was sure of, absolute, mind-bending certainty. He’d die for Parker and Hardison, ketchup did not belong on pasta, he did not talk.

Not in North Korea, not in Colombia, not ever.

“Bullshit.” He had more to say, but one forceful word was enough to send him into a coughing fit that had him double over in pain, shooting like a white-hot lightning bolt through every god-damn muscle in his body, his ribs and his hands.

“Really? Appears, if you combine two different ways to mess with a man’s memory, it fucks even with Eliot Spencer’s head.“

The little shithead looked completely unconcerned as he pulled open the takeout box and dug in. If this where a grift, a con, if Eliot knew even a general playbook he could have given Quinn the openings he needed. As it stood… all he had was being Eliot Spencer. And the truth.

“Marx was there. He knows that already.”

“Yes. But it’s nice to have confirmation.” Quinn gestured with the spoon, freely drawing random circles to replace words that got lost when he chewed. Chili.

Eliot’s eyes zeroed in on the box, squinting in the glare of the overhead light. He noticed too late how Quinn had stilled, the careless nonchalance on his face replaced by a cruel smile and eyes so dead that not even the knowledge of Shelley’s poem could bring a memory of warmth between them.

Dread settled in Eliot’s stomach. In every con there was one player who did not play, could not because he didn’t know the playbook. The mark.

The last contact with Shelley had been two months back. A quick phone call for his birthday.

First rule of torture resistance: Everybody breaks.

“Let’s talk about Adnan, Eliot, about the things Marx doesn’t know… how that kid got lynched by a mob after you interrogated him. Does Marx know that? Hm? What about the things the boy told you? Where he put the crate?”

With no strands of his hair curling around his face, Quinn had lost all and any softness. Without the humor in his eyes that he wore like a vanguard against the world…

Without a reason to not betray Parker and Hardison…

“How about you tell me about that.” He smiled. “See Eliot… we both know you don’t care for your safety. We both know your chances of getting out of here alive are imaginary.”

Quinn’s fingers, strong, capable, good at massages, that liked to dig into Eliot’s hair and spend hours doling out lazy caresses, lifted the takeout box and turned it just a fraction into the light of the single lamp until the writing became apparent. “What you might not be aware of...is that we are not bargaining for _your_ life.”

Bridgeport Brewpub.

The smile on Quinn’s face vanished, his eyes flicked up to the camera.

“Rule number 1. Everyone breaks. You have one night to think about where that crate is.”

He stood and, walking out, took another spoonful.

 


	6. Nothing won...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here now the update version. I have the previous version saved, in case someone wants to have it ;) 
> 
> As for this chapter: Everything gets a little less bad.

He dumped the takeout box into the trash can right outside the shooting range’s door, where the plastic wrapper of the syringe had landed earlier and kept walking straight ahead, towards the creaky wooden door and the ominous clock above it, like a goodwill donation from Silent Hill.

Behind it, lay peace. Cool, cracked subway tiles at his back and the silence of darkness wrapping around Quinn's shaking shoulders as he slowly slid down the wall.

Nobody saw him. Nobody heard him once he pulled the thrice-damned earbud from his ear and with it their desperate silence,  long since replacing the hope and then the anger and the resignation in their voices.

Nobody saw him, still, he covered his eyes like he had done as a child hiding in cupboards and sheds, and smothered the one sob he couldn't contain behind his teeth dug into his fist.

 

He'd done it. He'd delivered the best show he could after the information Hardison had dumped on him earlier...about how they had been wrong. About how Marx was not just a broker whose worst crime might have been selling contracted hits or a smuggler after a box of antiques.

'Money laundering, equity crime, real estate crime. Their money movements are all over the place but he runs these firms through strawmen. Hell, I can already smell some small dictators he's financing through these.'

Quinn laughed in the dark and the safety of the old bathroom, glad to know that nobody bothered to film Marx's henchmen pissing.

"Branch managers," he said and swallowed heavily.

'This is a tangled mess, worse than Congress. Heck, this guy could still be nothing more than a clever businessman with a semi-successful model of tax evasion. If he isn't...So help us if he smells anything.'

Quinn had stood in the office with the video camera feed, a warm box with what had become one of his favorite foods in his hands and listened to Parker's voice beseeching him to not let Marx guess at anything.

And then he had promised her. Again. To do whatever was necessary.

The cold and dark quickly seeped into his skin through the meager protection of his dress shirt and suit pants. He didn't feel cold like others did. Not like this. But he understood the warning.

So he pushed back to his feet and plugged the earbud back in, greeted by Parker's tentative "Quinn?"

"I'm here, girlfriend." One last swipe across his eyes. Pulling down the sleeves of his shirt. And a slow, a very slow breath that pressed everything down, down, down until he could breathe again. Then a smile.

"You know I love you, girl, but that's no reason to take you to the toilet with me."

In the silence that followed, he expected her to call him out. But she just uttered a lost "Ok."

 

~~~

 

“Impressive work, Julien.”

Quinn turned his head against the headrest of the brand new office chair and caught a look out the murky window and up the hill behind the low office building. Flaming red and yellows in the cloudy autumn day framed by early 2000s wallpaper peeling away from drafty windows in a lightless room.

Shelley would have a field day with that picture. _My name is Ozymandias…_

A nice analogy with far too many layers for him to unpack. When he had to deal with poetry, he preferred to just enjoy letting the words roll off his tongue, getting lost in the rhythm and not think of all the implications. Leave that to other, more intelligent people.

“Thank you, Mr. Marx. Couldn’t have done it if Mr. Reimann hadn’t such a tight rein on Spencer’s containment.”

“Ah...is he there?”

Quinn turned back towards the room and eyed Reimann past the tips of his own combat boots on the ugly desk.

The German raised a glass of bourbon in salute, eyes glittering like a satisfied cat over alcohol-ruddy cheeks.

Quinn had made up what he’d said to Eliot earlier, about Reimann taking a shower and all the things he’d insinuated with it. Looking at him now… Luckily, murder always was on option.

He smiled. “Yessir. Our combined approaches seem fairly successful.”

For now, he still needed the German’s goodwill to keep him in line until they knew what exactly Marx was after, why and how much he had on the team and on Eliot. But when that changed…

Until then, Reimann was here and Marx sat in his office, taking part in whatever this was only through his enjoyment of the daily surveillance videos they sent him and a smattering of useful background information he sent back.

“Decide on your own terms how to proceed with Reimann, Julien. I’m not going to force you to get rid of him if you still find use. Just remember, he has an ultimate role to play.”

“Yes, sir.”

 _Fuck off._ He said it softly, in the small corner of his mind where he’d said the same thing to every commanding officer in his life. And it might have fooled Marx through the “prehistoric landline with the authentic black and white movie crackle” as Hardison called it, but it didn’t fool his partners on the other side of Hardison’s com.

Parker’s unladylike snort made his lips twitch. “He’s grooming you.” She snorted again. “But we were faster.”

She claimed him like that was a thing that people did, not just a temporary extension into their lives, there one moment and 'once had been there' in the next. But Parker didn’t work like other people, like Hardison or Eliot.

Quinn no longer wondered if that was a good thing or a bad, nothing but glad that she was in his ear, here, with him for now.

Every security relevant part of the former shooting range had been updated. Heavy security doors where they held Eliot.

Three guard shifts à 10 men walking the grounds and the peripherye with fixed posts up the surrounding hills and no civilization for two miles in any direction, the next being a small town that lived off of tourists and renting out lodges to hikers and skiers.

Surveillance in every room except the bathroom/shower and this office where all the camera feeds ran together on a wall of screens. All closed circuit with the only way in and out hard copies. No internet connection. Barely any cell reception.

Marx had planned it well, planned everything about this with Alec Hardison in mind.

But like many people he had underestimated the spectrum of Hardison’s genius, writing him off as the computer nerd too soon only to get whacked in the back of the head by the engineer, the forger or the walking encyclopedia.

In Marx’s world, a man like Alec Hardison didn’t exist who could hack into the video feeds via a wireless dongle that Quinn had plugged into the control station and Quinn’s cell phone connection that Hardison somehow had conjured out of nothing.

In Alec Hardison’s world being truly alone didn’t exist, vanishing off the face of the earth didn’t happen.

Parker spoke gently. “Ask him about the box.”

Quinn obeyed with no second thought.

“One more thing, sir. I hooked Spencer with the info you gave us but I’ll need more background on the merchandise. The moment we slip up, he’ll call our bluff and close up like a clam.”

On the surveillance screens off to the side, both he and Reimann watched the curled up form of Eliot Spencer chained to the far corner of his cell, unmoving, unresisting, a perfect picture of a broken man. The occasional residual muscle cramp, even hours later, sold it well.

Reimann refilled his glass and raised it to his lips as if he toasted the tortured man, oblivious to the violent wave of rage that branded up just on the other side of the desk and how close he came _again_ to a slow and painful death.

Quinn breathed slowly, consciously, and thought of strangulation while he smiled for the phone.

“I wouldn’t wanna let all this good work go to waste, Mr. Marx.”

“Are you trying to manipulate me, Julien?” Marx’s amusement made it easier to maintain the false smile.

“Yessir. Is it working?” And never show fear.

“It might be if there was a deeper secret here. But alas, I’m afraid this is just a chest with very rare and very valuable antiquities.” They all heard the polished smoothness that hid lies in Marx’s voice, the deeper hunger and need feeding the risks he took with this operation.

“We need that box,” Parker stated.

On the screens, Eliot curled deeper in on himself.

They needed a lot of things.

 

~~~

 

He sent Reimann away with a promise of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in the lodge Marx had rented for his security personnel. Had promised him not to do anything to Eliot in the meantime except watching him suffer on the video feeds.

They had joked that Reimann could check his compliance him in the morning; after all, nothing in the base went unnoticed or unheard.

“You ok, man?” Hardison’s voice broke the silence that Quinn had let drag on for too long after the German left, just watching the shadows in the dim room deepen with each moment of fast fading daylight.

Quinn didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. Though he should have been the one to ask the question. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He was the one who’d witnessed torture and been tortured before. Theirs was a dirty business and Quinn had spent too many years in it for illusions, except here he sat and wanted, maybe for the first time, to be clean of something he’d done. Not Eliot’s screams, not that thing with the electroshocks, just the flash of betrayal and fear when Eliot understood that he’d been set up and didn’t know by whom.

He hadn’t known that Reimann had left the shower minutes earlier and set up shop in front of the surveillance screens, preparing the send them off to Marx, while Quinn had still anxiously counted Eliot’s too slow breaths.

The bourbon on Quinn’s tongue was cheap and disgusting. Just what he needed.

“Guard rotation will move to night shift in an hour.” He stood and knocked back the rest of the drink. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

A moment’s beat of silence before Hardison’s too soft, too understanding voice hummed an affirmative. “Alright. Take your time. Just make sure the earbud don’t get wet. ‘M still working on that one. Sorry. And remember...”

Quinn snorted. “The toilets and the surveillance room are the only ones without cameras. Thank you, Hardison. That’s a great relief.”

This time, his smiled edged into being honest.

“You did good, Quinn,” Parker murmured between their banter and no, he didn’t wanna hear that.

“I know, girlfriend...”

“It was necessary.”

He sighed. “I know that.”

Her voice dropped a few notes, a little darker and more intimate. “Eliot will understand.”

“Eh... I’m not so sure ‘bout that.”

More of Reimann’s awful bourbon looked awfully tempting on the table.

“Eliot once almost let me drown on a job once while he stood a few feet away, chatting with the mark, so...remind him of that if he complains,” Hardison commented, covering concern with fake and pretty overdone anger that Quinn wouldn’t call him out on.

“Eliot forgives pretty much everything when he likes you,” Parker said with the matter of fact tone of someone who always was on the receiving end of that forgiveness.

There was a hierarchy there for forgiveness given; using his partners against him would be weighed hard against the fact that Eliot had had pretty good sex with Quinn. Scales, Quinn wouldn’t bet on.

“That applies to you, Parker.”

He grabbed his duffle from under the camping bed in the corner - oh the luxurious life of international crime - and headed for the door, hesitating at the last second when Parker spoke again.

“Yeah well, it was my plan you silly. And he likes you, too.”

Not like you. Eliot Spencer likes nobody like you, he wanted to add, though he was pretty sure they knew that.

Nice of them to still humor him, though.

 

~~~

 

In all the big adventures kidlet Quinn had read from worn down books, there had always been that short stretch of way the hero had to cross to get to fulfill their quest: a bridge, the dark forest, a river, Mordor. They’d all been reflections of their own fear. Conquer thyself.

Adult Quinn thoroughly appreciated the irony, crawling over cordite stinking concrete below the bulletproof windows of the room where he’d tortured the man he was about to visit in his cell.

“I can take care of the camera in Eliot’s room. But more will eat too much bandwidth.” Hardison at least had sounded properly apologetic. “The swap will be bad enough. Sorry, man.”

Damned be Marx’s paranoia. Damned be everything hateable enough to distract Quinn from the sinking feeling in his stomach as he curled into that corner beside the cell door and dragged his duffle closer.

“I’m not a fucking caterpillar, you know?”

He risked a glance at his watch. Three minutes down from twenty-five ‘til the next patrol.

Nobody rose to the bait.

Quinn pulled the spare key to Eliot’s cell from inside the palm of his leather glove and closed his eyes

“‘M going in. Quinn, prepare.”

“Ready when you are, Hardison.” He shouldered the bag and pulled his legs under him.

“Alright, got the outside camera. Turning off...now!”

Quinn dashed the last three feet, key in hand, fumbling for one terrifying moment and slipped inside.

“Clear.”

His back hit the door in hopes of staying in the camera’s blind spot but he needn’t have bothered.

The connection crackled with static, then Hardison’s voice came back, strong and clear as a summer day. “Gotcha.” Some typing. “You’re good to go. Outside camera on surveillance. I’ll warn you in advance.”

In the darkness that followed the lock snicking close, Quinn’s breath sounded overly loud. The dull thud of the duffle like a bang as he fished the smartphone from his pocket and turned it on.

Eliot sat in the same corner Marx, by design, had deemed ‘his’, chains looping through shackles on his wrists and feet, tying both loosely to his waist and from there to the wall.

Nobody had bothered to give him a blanket. He only had the floor.

Still, he sat with his elbows resting easily on his drawn up knees, weary but alert, and had he not already known what Reimann had done to Eliot’s right hand, Quinn could never have guessed with the way it lightly rested against on the other.

The deadly glare behind his sweat and blood-matted hair, sitting so easily with the sneer and the scruff, distracted from the soft shivers that ran up his shoulders, guessed more from the night vision feed upstairs than the flesh and blood man in front of him.

Quinn’s fingers stretched and flexed close. Finally, one part of him whispered and wanted to cross the room in three big strides to… do what? The other asked, the one that assembled a sniper rifle blindly and checked for sightlines in streaming sunlight that he calculated into visibility and not warmth

That part remembered that the prisoner’s deadliest ability lay not in dishing out violence, that Eliot Spencer didn’t deliver the first beat down, maybe not even the second but he always, always remained the last one standing.

Staring at him across the expanse of this tiny cell, Quinn, led on stupidly by the dumb part of his heart, marveled in the knowledge that Eliot had let him close enough to understand this. Had let Quinn close enough to maybe devise a way to take him down. Fast and brutal. Everything he had doled out at once to take away any chance for Eliot to find his footing.

Maximum damage.

Quinn would still use a sniper rifle.

 

“Hey there, pal,” he spoke softly, as he crouched down, consciously avoiding ‘my friend’. Those were Julien’s words and Julien sat upstairs, drinking whiskey while he pondered more ways to make Eliot Spencer’s life hell.

The icy eyes, reflecting in the low light didn’t blink nor move.

Quinn pulled a blanket from the bag, soft and warm and light.

“We got 20 minutes 'til next patrol. I’m under orders to get you to drink something, to eat and to hook you up to fluids before that happens.” With a slow step forward, Quinn spread his hands and released a long breath, like a sleepwalker, handing over the crippling need for control to the only other person present. “I am aware that you can kill me, chains or no chains. You are aware that I can kill you. I know you won’t.”

Eliot blinked and something warm, like relief, flooded Quinn's system, originating behind his breastbone. It took an inordinate amount of control to not smile. “I need you to trust me, Eliot. One last time. One minute.”

Quinn picked a spare earbud from his pocket and held it up like a universal peace offering, like the white flag to cross this battlefield between them.

“I got ‘em here.” He dared risk letting softness bleed onto his face as he stepped closer and Eliot’s death stare shifted to something like cautious anticipation and no move, no hit or kick followed when Quinn stepped into his space and crouched down.

“Hey there…” In the twilight, Quinn could ignore the bruises and see nothing but the body underneath. He’d come to know it well, not yet well enough to call it familiar and that probably would never happen now, but if anyone had dared ask, he’d call it known territory. Welcome territory. Still exhilarating but almost safe. And now, not after yesterday, but after this afternoon, already almost missed.

He slowly reached out to brush Eliot’s hair back behind the ear on the uninjured side of his face.

“For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry,” he murmured, fingertips lingering a second too long on Eliot’s temple before he hooked the earbud in his ear, and after, instead of moving away.

“Eliot?” Parker breathed.

Hardison didn’t even pretend to be steady. “Say something, El. We’re...we’ll get you out. I swear.”

Close like this, Quinn couldn’t miss the sickening rush of relief on Eliot’s face, his eyes fluttering shut, lips opening on a response that failed with his shoulders sagging down as his head leaned back against the cold concrete wall.

“I’m…,” he croaked, making Quinn wish he had something for his throat. “I’m ok. Little banged up.” Contender for most unconvincing lie of the year but, hey, Eliot. If it helped him to think he could convince anybody, Quinn wouldn’t call him out on it. It was a small blessing already that Eliot didn’t know just when the coms had come back online.

He never needed to know that, Quinn decided, watching the tiniest of smiles bloom on Eliot’s face. A little, crooked thing with the cut in his lip and the broken cheekbone that’s swollen into a misshapen lump. A barely there curl of his mouth, vanishing in the darkness like so many things he didn’t want others to know.

Quinn shook his head and left them to it while he grabbed the bag and draped the blanket around the freezing man’s shoulders, already unscrewing a bottle of electrolyte water.

“How little banged up is he really, Quinn?”

Three voices uttered different sounds of disappointed as the softness of the moment broke with the cool calculation of Nate Ford’s reality, chasing practicalities even to the detriment of all their need of reassurance.

Only Eliot took the revelation with calm annoyance and Quinn turned away to hide the smile that tugged at his lips. But there was no curbing the rest of the unbidden avalanche of emotion.

“Nate?” Eliot looked up as if he sensed the change in Quinn. He raised an eyebrow as Quinn pushed the bottle into his good hand and next pulled out an energy bar and two intravenous bags. Quinn just shook his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Italy?”

“Close…” Nathan Ford said amicably. “Dubai.”

Eliot sat straighter, dropping the bottle before he had taken a sip. “You’re not going into Iraq, Nate. Think of Sophie, she’s…”

“Oh, he is thinking of me, Eliot. Don’t you worry.”

Quinn caught the bottle and nudged it back into Eliot’s hands, using the exasperated softness that Eliot reserved for Sophie Devereaux to get him to drink. Just a warning glare and a finger pointed first at the bottle and then at Eliot’s earbud. A little nudge of Quinn’s chin to make the point.

Eliot might love Parker and Hardison with all his heart, but Sophie was the kind of friend that could make him do whatever she wanted. And distract him from all the things he didn’t want to do. Quinn was the kind of friend that was never above using that.

“I am shocked that you still believe you could keep us away when you’re in danger.”

“Sophie, you’re…”

She cut him off. “Perfectly capable of finding out what Marx’s game is. From here.”

“You are the one we need to worry about at the moment, Eliot.”

Quinn snorted. “Good luck trying to convince him of _that.”_

Eliot immediately proved him right. “I told you I’m fine!”

Silence settled. Then Parker spoke.

“Quinn?”

Eliot’s eyes snapped to him, to Quinn’s fingers that still carefully held the bottle in case Eliot’s mangled hands failed and then to his guilty eyes. He dared him to say anything.

Thing was… with Eliot Spencer. He didn’t go down. Ever. Quinn had beat him up and kicked him in the ribs and almost had had him down… and in the end? Had ended up unconscious.

They both knew. They’d repeated that first fight several times by now and the result remained the same...less predictable with each time, but for now, Eliot would always win.

Quinn sighed softly and shook his head. “He’s fine enough that he would beat me up if I said the wrong thing. That fine enough for you?”

Someone snickered. It sounded like Shelley.

“You wouldn’t lie to me,” Parker asked with a stern voice.

“Absolutely wouldn’t dare, girlfriend.” He held Eliot’s gaze. And then he smiled. A careful peace offering. An equally careful response.

“Next time tell me what you’re doing, Quinn.”

Quinn twisted his mouth around the guilt, around the fresh smell of disinfectant and the taste of more apologies. “Couldn’t. They record everything, sound too. Reimann was watching. And Marx is probably going over the tapes just now.”

And to his surprise, Nate Ford came to his aid.

“Whatever Marx is after, this is a whole lot bigger and he’s more dangerous than what it looked like. Hardison’s still trying to piece everything together. Not sure he got half of it.”

“I got a lot. But yeah, not everything. It’s too widespread and too well hidden. Marx left a lot of false trails to follow.”

Nobody spoke after that, silence stretching, the only sound their breaths, the chains and all the words they know how to say.

“We need a signal. Should’ve had one for a while.” Eliot finally admitted, a faint touch of wry humor colored the words and Quinn shifted his eyes to his hands as he chuckled.

“Yeah… We can’t keep meeting like this, thinking we’re after each other.”

“Well… we are.” Eliot lifted a shoulder, the good one, a bare fraction and dropped it immediately in not quite a shrug but the hint of a smile. “Coming after each other.”

That vanished when Quinn curled his fingers around Eliot’s wrist to expose the vulnerable inside of his arm. With a helpless sound, Quinn plucked the earbud from his ear and buried it in his hand. His fingertips against Eliot’s pulse point twitched.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Eliot. You need fluids. And painkillers. So, I suggest, you don’t try to convince me how unfazed you are. I can feel your pulse.”

Twisting his good hand in a lightning fast motion Eliot captured the younger man’s hand in a brutal, wordless grip. Just that. Nothing said, nothing but his bright eyes in the near dark practically glowing as he stared at Quinn, lips pressed together, eyes narrowed.

Quinn lowered his voice to a whisper not even Eliot’s com could pick up: “Stop pretending. I’m not them.”

The moment Eliot’s grip loosened, Quinn felt man’s fingers shiver against his own despite the blanket, or maybe because of it. First stage hypothermia. It would be easy to intertwine them as if that were something they did.

Instead, he gently tried turning Eliot’s forearm again, listening with one ear as he caught up with the others about Marx and everything that had happened.

Quinn cleaned and disinfected the skin on Eliot’s forearm with the precision born of experience and slipped the needle in after seeking reassurance with one last glance.

“So… they’re feeding money back to him,” Eliot said and Quinn looked up to find blue eyes watching what he did, the lines on his face smoothed into relaxation and...not casualness but far from alarm either.

A glance at his watch. Still ten minutes.

Quinn shoved the earplug back in, just in time for Eliot’s next question, muffled as Quinn bent forward to feed the tube behind Eliot’s back, hidden along his forearm and to the infusion bag he’d hung from the same ring that held the chains.

“Hardison... Do you have big single payments for 1-3 person service contracts? Not monthly fees but events.”

Quinn sat back with a soft ‘oof’ and found Eliot’s questioning eyes and the raised eyebrows, asking with more eloquence than the man ever could why Quinn hadn’t thought of that himself.

The answer ‘because you were tortured at that moment’ would be, he was sure of it, wholly insufficient to Eliot Spencer.

“I…” Hardison himself stumbled and Quinn could hear him type frantically. “I haven’t checked. And I don’t have found any real shady stuff on his work computer. Why?”

“Contract hits,” Quinn snorted in unison with Shelley and handed Eliot an unpacked energy bar.

“15k single to a few hundred for a team. He’s a broker. If you wanna know how bad he is... He doesn’t run these jobs directly through SecuTech. So if he runs them, one of the straw firms where you wanna look.”

“Transactions this size attract less attention from big, regular customers than random sources…,” Nate added casually.

Hardison cursed softly under his breath. “I’m not sure Eliot will be happy that that’s the kind of information you’re dropping on us.”

Chewing Eliot rolled his eyes with a shake of his head and for the first time, Quinn felt something lighter bubble up from deep in his stomach that translated into a soft laugh at the faint, childish note of bad conscience from one of the world’s most feared cybercriminals.

“Yeah well, darling...he started it. Also? I’m not Eliot.”

“For now you are. For Eliot, you are,” Nate Ford broke the moment with expert precision. He couldn’t have known how their eyes met in the phone’s twilight.

 _‘Does he know?’_ Quinn mouthed. Eliot shrugged and looked away.

Quinn watched his own hands throw the cannula cover into the bag. “Still your huckleberry, pal. You need to get out, I get you out.”

Predictably, Eliot blocked it off. “I’m fine. We need to know what Marx is after and most of all what he knows.”

Sometimes, in shitty hotel rooms - or not so shitty ones - while he waited for the ‘go’ on a job, Quinn liked to clean his weapons or just stare at the ceiling, and think about the man he was. Inevitably, that ended in comparisons to Eliot Spencer. Because they were top players, even if Quinn had avoided a reputation like Eliot’s like the plague, but also because they were intimately familiar with how the other worked.

And always, Quinn had pegged himself as the selfish one. Always.

Yet, as he looked at the stubborn set of Eliot’s jaw, his nostrils flaring in preparation for a fight… Quinn liked to be selfishly free, unburdened from things that tied him down or had power over him. Eliot? Eliot liked to be selfishly dead. Shoving himself in front of those same things when they were threatened, in hopes that he would die to save them or be dead before he ever had to lose them.

And Nathan Ford spurred him on.

“He’s right, Quinn. We already talked that through. Eliot is our only way to get close enough to Marx to get what we need.”

“We’re not ready, buddy.” Where Nate tried to convince him, Shelley stated a fact and let Quinn draw his own conclusion. “Of the people I got available, Dylan is on leave after a shot to the _gut_ and Rosetti is…” He sighed. “pregnant. They’re protecting the pub.

The others just crossed back into US airspace. That leaves me. Trying to find a way to cut off their reinforcements with Parker.”

“Arson…,” their thief whispered, making Sophie jump into the conversation quickly.

“We need this over with as fast as possible in any case,” she said. “We need Marx’s chest and anything you know, Eliot, that might tell us what’s going on!”

“I have no idea.” Eliot ground his teeth. “That kid, Adnan, was brought to us by one of our teams because he’d been hanging outside the wrong side of the camp. I interrogated him because…” He stumbled into the inevitable wall of “classified” that he still kept up, no matter how long he wasn’t a soldier anymore or all the things he had done in between.

“Vance.” Parker supplied. “And Marx. We know. That’s why we called Shelley.”

Memories crossed Eliot’s face, followed by resignation. “Marx… wasn’t really part of all that. He knew a little of what was going on, more than his comrades, but he wasn’t really on the inside. So, I talked to the kid and he was going on how he wanted to make a delivery, sell some stuff.

I couldn’t get anything more out of him and it wasn’t really important. Every Iraqi tried to sell you something or they tried to blow you up. Mosul was crazy and looted antiques everywhere. It wasn’t really our job.” Eliot ground out. “But whenever we came across something, we took care of it. Goodwill after the lootings in the south and the disaster at Babylon.”

“So, he told you and you let him go?” Quinn asked and Eliot nodded.

“Planned to pick up whatever he had hidden right after but something came up… We never got to it.”

Shelley hummed thoughtfully. “We came back a week later, I think.”

“Yeah…”

“And the kid was dead. Total mess. They say he got lynched by a mob because he blabbed, but…”

Eliot shook his head. “That’s crap. We picked up people all the time and they all were more important than some dumb 17-year-old…”

“Could that have been Marx’s doing?”

“No… he was with us,” Shelley said. “That’s when I saved his life.”

“`Yeah, and I got hit instead…,” Eliot added without heat.

“And sent for a paid vacation. Stop complaining. He got hit a month later, after all. It’s like fate _wanted_ to take him out.”

Silence.

Quinn looked at Eliot and found Eliot already looking back, mouth open to speak. “Fate or…”

Hardison stopped him.

“Quinn, Patrol’s coming early. Two minutes.”

There was no time to follow up on that thought.

Quinn grabbed two heat packs from his duffle and activated them with far more force than necessary to replace a little of the blanket’s warm that he was ripping away from Eliot’s body. The bottle and plastic wrappers followed.

There was no doing about the infusion, but if he’d done it right, the guard would take one look at Eliot and never suspect a thing.

“One minute. Hurry, Quinn.”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying.”

He shoved the heating packs behind Eliot’s back and Eliot leaned back to trap them with his body. Crazy idiot’d get burned but Quinn had no time to tell him off, just enough to grab the duffle and shift onto the non-opening side of the cell door.

Eliot’s right leg stretched slowly, just as Quinn turned off his phone light, and grabbed a little piece of plastic to pull it beneath his body.

All of the guards had orders to not walk into that cell unless ordered.

“Hope this isn’t the one guard with the authority problem,” Hardison murmured and despite himself, Quinn smiled.

He moved the duffle behind him and unhooked his bracelet, the wire curling around his fingers like it belonged there. “Let him come,” he whispered.

He hadn’t killed in a while. Not since...

As he heard the steps come closer and inch farther against the wall, Nate’s voice softly crooning “Steady…” in his ear, he thought he wouldn’t mind it so much today.

But the window just snapped open, illuminating the man curled into the corner, knees drawn to his chest, arm tight against his torso and wasn’t covered by blood of his face hidden behind matted hair.

A scoff and it snapped shut again.

“Alright Eliot,” Nate released a very slow and deliberate breath. “Where is that chest.”

 

~~~

 

“So,” Hardison asked into the silence after everything had been said. “Shelley, you have someone who can pick that thing up?”

“Oh, absolutely. He’s in Baghdad. Let me just make a call.”

The silence stretched with nobody daring to say anything until the call finally connected. “Colonel? Hell yeah! It really is Marx. Sure. Listen, Vance...We need something…”

Hardison dropped his head to the briefing table “Oh hell, no…”

  
  



	7. Ashurbanipal's treasure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience and the sweet comments you left.   
> After a week of taking a break, here now the _real_ chapter 7.   
>  Enjoy. 
> 
> The good news? Nobody's getting tortured this week.   
> yay?

Michael Vance strode into the secured backroom with the confidence of a man willing to take a battlefield in a suit. An ancient warlord in figure and demeanor, he seemed like the kind of man to wipe  the pieces off a board instead of nudging them along. 

His boots hit the plush carpet on this side of the metal door with deafening silence. Massive shoulders strained against the standard issue American government suit jacket, hiding a weapon where it fell too loosely over his waist. His fingers flexed against nothing like a western fighter at high noon. 

If this were Tanger a hundred years past and not a room in an upscale Dubai hotel - the creams and warm browns and the touches of gold on surfaces that saw little wear and tear- this man  _ would  _ save Eliot. 

Sophie set her tea cup down on the art nouveau table next to the couch and stood to move towards the newcomer. 

Nate beat her to it by a second, strolling forward, hands in his pockets, as usual, unable to refuse a challenge, even if his opponent came accompanied by two highly trained soldiers. The men stared at her husband with cold eyes, their demeanor far too polished in its silent brutality to be mere grunts. They felt smooth, unlike Eliot, who emphasized his rough edges to hide the cutting steel underneath.

“Colonel Michael Vance…” Nate opened, in three words throwing down the gauntlet.

Nate knew how to take Eliot, he knew how to take on corrupt men. But honest believers? Those might forever elude him, unable to connect to a part of him he had inevitably lost. 

“Ditch the colonel, please. I’m on vacation.” Vance smirked.

Before Nate could open his mouth and rise to the challenge, Sophie extended a perfectly manicured hand with a perfectly charming smile. “Michael, then? Eliot told us quite a bit about you.”

Vance paused, head tilted like he just had found a revelation, and his smirk stretched into a pleased smile. His huge fingers curled carefully around her much smaller hands as he bent his head to indicate a kiss. 

“Sophie Devereaux,” he said. “He told me nothing about you, that bastard. I feel deprived.” 

Laughter bubbled up from her belly at the obvious lie and she let it spring free, gently tossing her hair back just in time to catch his eyes

“I don’t think he never wanted us to meet, Michael. Please, call me Sophie. All my friends do.” 

She hooked her hand into his elbow and led him the two steps to her husband. “I’d introduce you to my partner, Nate Ford, but I’m sure you have extensive files on each other.”

They sized each other up like men who had just that. 

She knew Nate did.

After Washington, he had made it a priority to learn about Michael Vance the way he learned about each potential target: obsessively. He only stopped when Eliot had told him to, point blank. If Nate wanted to know about his former CO and friend, he should ask. And he had emphasized “friend.” A gentle warning for Nate not to go too far. 

They shook hands. They measured each other, Nate barely reaching Vance’s shoulder. Maybe their hands lingered a moment too long before they parted again, nodding their truce like the honorable men neither of them were. 

“So,” Vance cast the opening volley, “you’re the guy who lost my man.” 

Nate accepted it with open arms and a thin-lipped smile.

“Oh, we didn’t lose him, we know exactly where he is. Did your  _ other _ man not tell you?” 

As Nate turned toward the crate, Sophie watched Vance’s eyes crinkle just enough to soften his heroically handsome face, as if he’d expected Nate’s reaction and welcomed the sharp bite of his snark. 

“And it looks like whatever Marx is after, it’s connected to us...yes, yes. I noticed. So...let’s find out, shall we?” Vance added, humor fading.

Both of them fell in line, standing as they were on opposing sides of the table and both trying not to show how much they cared or worried, lest it gave the other an angle, protecting their fronts and leaving their backs bare to her. Something she could forgive with Nate, he was used to having her there, but Vance…maybe Eliot hadn’t told him anything about her after all. 

He didn’t look at her as his companions lifted the crate onto the surprisingly sturdy table. They stepped back, waiting for Vance’s signal to move outside. 

And then they were alone with the crate—horrifyingly plain, the pale wood marred by sand and digging tools, covered in dust, and yet just a transport crate. Not caked in the blood of the hell Eliot just went through, though—and the thought almost made her smile—his definition of hell and hers likely differed greatly.

The silence settled heavily over the room and left them all too many moments to think while they waited for someone to take the first step.

Vance pulled a knife the length of her forearm from an ankle sheath, one serrated edge promising horrible pain, the dark, hand-smoothed grip identifying it as more than just an impressive accessory. He rammed it under the lid, wrenching the cheap wood open with all the strength his suit jacket barely contained. And underneath… 

Sophie had seen this play out so many times already, over so many crates in her life. Bubble wrap, wood shaving, paper, sometimes rags. She owned several of them herself. Had stolen dozens more. She’d loved most of them, been disappointed in a few, but she had never dreaded them.

And never had she seen quite the layer of clay-baked sand that moisture had created, trickling in between the wood over the course of ten years, as if time itself wanted to protect the precious contents under a hard shell.

Vance cracked it without second thought. 

Without meaning to, she reached out to touch it, but Nate stopped her with a hand over hers.

“Careful,” Vance said. “There might be uranium ammunition in there for all we know.”

Sophie had already opened her mouth to refute him when she caught Vance’s look, the serious worry in his eyes that reminded her of Eliot. She pulled her hand back without a word.

Instead, she folded her fingers between Nate’s, holding on and damned to watch while Vance pulled the wood shavings aside.

 

It wasn’t uranium ammunition. 

Though at first glance they all held their breaths, until the artificial light revealed the precise indentations and shadows of fine carvings on several cylinder seals.

They weren’t all made of shining metallic hematite. She saw chalcedony and lapis lazuli at least, but all of them showed the same perfect preservation and detailed carving. 

Sophie reached in and lifted the first seal from its protective bed, raising it to the light to catch a better glance. On it, figures fought, their weapons raised high to honor a man sitting on a throne, alone, except for the big bird circling over his head. A warrior king, rightfully revered and honored for all that he was.

Her fingertips brushed over the cool metal, feeling it warm under her skin, like the man whose acerbic wit and grumpy presence they all missed.  

“Oh Nate,” she breathed, “they’re beautiful.”

People had always called her an art thief. And of course, they were right. But unlike Parker she wasn’t a thief who happened to steal art; she was an art lover who turned a lack of opportunity into enough passion to make her dreams come true. Dreams like this. 

“Two thousand dollars in New York, I’d think,” she said, blinking away some silly tears as she handed the seal to Nate. “It’s an exquisite piece. They all are.”

Nate took the seal from her to inspect it himself, his eyes lingering fondly on her as she plucked the next two seals from the crate. Vance watched with an amused gaze. 

Next came an intricately carved piece of ivory, crowned by a winged bull, cleaned and polished. She turned it on its back with an expert motion, already looking for the sticker. 

“This is an inventory sign of the Iraqi National Museum,” she said. “Very new.” She rubbed the bull’s head carefully with her thumb, the barest a touch. “Possibly never on display. That might go for several hundred thousand dollars through an official auction house. A little less under the hand. Nate?”

“If he can’t find it,” Vance said, “there are lists of everything reported stolen. We’ll find out.” He grabbed the remaining wool shavings with both hands and pulled them out of the crate, dropping another cylinder seal from the filling in the process. Nate deftly caught it and set next to the others on the table. 

He let his finger rest there for a moment, his one-sided little smile barely hid the thoughts in his head churning. 

“What is it?” Sophie asked, setting the ivory piece down. 

“I don’t know yet.”

“But something’s bugging you.”

He made a noncommittal sound.

She felt Vance’s gaze on both of them, dissecting them mentally as if he could find their secret, whatever that might be. 

Nate only smiled, his hands shoved back into the pockets of his pants, barely long enough to come to rest before he tugged them free again and put his hands onto the table to peer into the crate. 

As she followed his gaze, she found the floor of the crate too high to be empty, covered by an oil-stained canvas rag.

He pulled it back Beneath the rag lay a cuneiform tablet, a plain rectangle in near perfect preservation with only one corner missing about two inches. It was somewhere between grey and ochre, unassuming, some might say, but the sharp indentations stretching over its surface built a three-dimensional landscape, carrying secrets, not in its apparent ugliness, but deep within: the magic of times long gone and the words of men long dead.

“Wow.” Vance stared inside, brows raised toward his receding hairline. “Alright, I admit it. That’s impressive.”

“Stolen from the museum, too, it seems.” Sophie gestured for him to lift it out. “Someone has been attempting restoration work in any case.” She brushed over the missing corner where someone had obviously tried to fit in a matching bit of clay and done an impressive job.

Nate took the tablet from Vance and placed it onto the table to reveal the last piece left in the crate, sandwiched by a layer of protective foam. Perfect curves and slopes, not one burr or sharp corner, shaped the classic form of a winged genie. The smooth surface of the gipsum mellowed even the harsh indoor light to a gentle touch where it flowed over the finely arched tip of a lamassu’s wing, finding not one deviation in its form. 

Only to abruptly be cut off where a saw had cut through.

Her hand flew to her mouth, too late to catch her gasp. A thought made real. “This is—do you know what this is?” 

Nate at her side didn’t react, but Vance shook his head, admitting his lack of knowledge without shame. 

“This is the holy grail of stolen Iraqi antiquities. There were people in the Green Zone in Baghdad willing to pay half a million just to get a chance at trying to get one of those. Even Moreau.” She closed her mouth with a sharp snap of her teeth.

“Moreau?” Nate asked, silk and honey dripping from his voice, not unkind, just curious in the kind of way he reserved for uncooperative marks. “I didn’t even know you’d been to Baghdad.”

“Oh Nate, please. Everyone was in Baghdad in 2003. The Green Zone was like a traveling circus for every criminal, legal or otherwise, on either side of the Atlantic. We all wanted a piece of what we knew was going on.” 

She tried a smile but it broke on the memory, not the grifter’s, but the art lover’s. Her fingertips rested on the tip of a stone-carved feather and she shuddered at the image. 

“A danse macabre of the worst the world had to offer all put together in one spot. Sipping champagne while outside bombs exploded.” She sighed. “Moreau made his big break with the Babylonian and Sumerian cities in the south. Uruk, Isin, Umma. He controlled whole villages and let them dig for him.”

She tapped on the frieze in the box. “Pieces like this, they were commissioned by people who could afford to have someone walk into Nineveh and cut a piece out of the reliefs of the palace of Ashurbanipal right under the nose of the US army. Moreau never seemed to manage to break into that niche.” 

“Nineveh…” Nate stared at her, exhaling slowly, to give the thought time to form. “Mosul.” 

Vance scowled at the notion. “We practically  _ sat _ on that palace. You either managed to get in before we got there or you had to have someone inside.”

Nate took one abrupt step back and turned on his heel. “Eliot was in Iraq in 2003. Fact. He was working for you. In Mosul. With Marx.” He swiveled around to level a borderline accusing finger at Vance, who deflected that offhand attack with a shrug.

“He was serving his country,” Vance said.

She looked at Nate and found him looking at Vance, too, appraising him and his morals and his connection to Eliot. Doubting both.

“Moreau was in Iraq at that time. Baghdad. Very successfully dealing in antiquities. Correct?” Nate asked.

“Nate…” she began.

None of this was their secret to tell. 

Eliot claimed client confidentiality. Moreau had never been a client. Moreau was Eliot’s nightmare, the stain on his hands and the dark shadow over his shoulder he had finally managed to step away from. And nobody, not even Nate, had the right to use it to make a point. 

Vance looked at Nate and nodded, his face clouding over with a peculiar kind of sadness. “I know about Moreau.” An admission, resonating in hesitance to her own. Regret? If one dared ascribe that notion to someone like Michael Vance. 

Sophie cocked her hip against the table and pursed her lips, buying seconds to make an ultimate decision. In the end, she knew what that decision had to be. Weighing pain against pain, the knowledge of what Eliot was going through at that moment… 

He’d survived his connection to Moreau. He’d survive. Just that. If only he lived, he’d heal.

Folding her hands, she turned to Nate. “When I arrived in autumn, Moreau had already wrapped half the people there around his finger. Back then he was not yet that all-encompassing criminal entity. But he was charming, worldly, beautiful. Very generous, too.”

A small smile stretched across her lips as she remembered the monster that wore the mask of man so well—his black hair, mysterious eyes, the ever-present sardonic tilt to his sharp mouth. “I am the best at what I do. But Moreau? He was the best at everything he did. He sold art and arms and opportunity- legal and illegal- and danced on that ball like the devil himself.” 

“And that’s where Eliot met him,” Nate said. No doubt in his voice. “This is not about a box full of antiques, even if they’re worth one-point-five million. This is about Moreau. Marx didn’t try to buy this crate—”

“It  _ is  _ his crate, the boy was just a courier,” Sophie confirmed. “Marx was the one who facilitated the thefts at Nineveh.”

Vance’s frown deepened as Nate stared at the frieze. “And Eliot? He what? Was in on it? Or did he just get unlucky that we dumped the interrogation on him because he happened to be free at the time?” 

Sophie could watch as something in Nate shifted; he stepped out of the role of concerned friend and into the mastermind, sizing Vance up with the distant interest of an entomologist. 

“He wasn’t in on it, no. You wouldn’t believe how many of our clients just got ‘unlucky’. Nobody chooses to cross the wrong people at the wrong time.” 

For a second, Vance’s face twisted in the same incredulity that Sophie felt at the words, then it dissolved in booming laughter. “Eliot Spencer doesn’t have ‘unlucky’ happen to him. He is the ‘unlucky’ that happens to everybody else. No way in hell does anybody who knows him cross him just because of some old clay. Marx is not that dumb. Hell.” He jabbed his finger at the crate and its contents spread over the table, then at Nate with his eyes burning in some unholy anger. “The little pisshead might be more clever than most of us if he pulled this off. So what, in nine hells, is going on here?” 

“He smuggled the merchandise out of the country,” Nate said, “And something in there is so valuable that Marx is willing to risk facing Eliot Spencer and us.” 

Nate swiveled on his heel and stared at the valuables spread on the table, his forehead creased and lips moving wordlessly around racing thoughts.

He pulled his phone from his pocket halfway through, wandering again as he lifted it to his ear. “Hardison, yeah. Yes, I know what time it is. Listen, I need everything on Marx Senior’s company. Since around 1995. Yeah, when Marx got involved. Connection to Iraq and Moreau. Oh and… how desperately does Marx need one point five million dollars? Not very?“ Nate made a face. “Thank you.” 

He flipped it in his hands and ignored the gaze Sophie cast at Vance who eyed Nate with a sharp, if a little bemused look, watching him dissect the situation and already making plans on how to use it.

“Marx was shot in 2003. November. Two months after the incident with the kid.” He threw in another puzzle piece with the calm calculation of a predator. “Random firefight in Mosul. He got hit in the knee.” 

“‘Random.’” Nate shifted from foot to foot as he stared at the two bigger stone pieces, pursing his lips.

“Viewed like this, it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” Sophie said. 

Two men dabbling in the same market, one of them Moreau, the other young, ambitious, hard to reach because he had hidden himself behind the protection of the US military.

Vance shook his head, disbelief on his features. “And the lynching of the kid was what? A warning not to work with Marx?”

“Maybe.” 

Nate’s drawn-out words petered out into the room, driven away by the sound of his finger tapping softly on the clay of the cuneiform tablet. 

Then he grabbed it and flipped it with the dextrous hands of someone who had dealt with art his whole life. And cards. 

“Moreau didn’t just dabble in antiques. And neither does Marx. Their methods may not have been perfected yet but they weren’t amateurs, so something about this must be different that Marx took such a risk.”

It took Sophie a moment to understand what he was looking for in the dark ocher of the clay, dust still clinging to the cracks and dips in the surface. “No inventory number. Nothing.”

She bent closer. “No residue glue either. Or scratched off varnish. The back has been molded in one go. No spots covered after the fact to hide identification.”

Her manicured fingernails contrasted against the ancient surface as she gently tipped it to the side in her husband’s hands. “It’s an impeccable job. Almost impossible to see differences in past and present.”

Vance frowned. “Isn’t that unusual? I mean, not an expert, but I thought they used different clay to mark what’s modern from the original. ” 

“Yes, today. They didn’t always do it but…” She gently took the tablet and raised it to her face, inhaling the scent deeply in small sniffs. “No museum dust. No oil. No varnish.”

Vance opened his mouth and Sophie explained. “For it to be old and having been uninventarized it would’ve been shelved in a magazine or an attic for a long time. And museum magazines have a very distinctive smell, especially old ones.” 

She set the piece down with a last loving caress over the incisions. “I wonder what it’s saying.”

“Possibly something about bad quality copper.” Nate laughed at his own bad joke, crows feet around his eyes deepening, and no, she couldn’t not have laughed him, infantile evil genius and all. 

“Just open it.”

Amusement still danced in his eyes as Nate took the knife Vance offered but vanished as soon, as he started to carefully knock the handle against the clay. “Even if it looks the same, if the original tablet is genuine, it’s what, two thousand?”

“Two-five to three if it’s the same timeframe as the frieze.” 

“Three thousand years older than the addition.” 

Like a magician, the showman he was at heart, Nate couldn’t help but gloat a little as he slid the tip of the blade along the tablet’s side until he found what he was looking for and shoved it between the two parts. The back came away, not in pieces, but one solid block and hit the tabletop with the distinctive dull plop of clay, soaking up the sound even as it made it, like the weight of history demanded that it only be whispered. 

A laminated stack of paper and a shrink-wrapped electronic circuit rested embedded in the false back, now open like a book, vulnerable to their incredulous stares and Vance’s soft whistle. 

He grabbed his knife back from Nate to shove it under the laminate and lever it out of its clay bed, slitting the plastic with barely constrained force before any of them could protest. A few paper sheets scattered over the table as he tore it open, covering the artifacts and relegating them to decoration. They grasped after the paper with low curses, both of them catching a few sheets.“It’s names,” Nate said.

Sophie’s fingers already slid down the list, the numbers, half clear script, half code. She stopped in the lower third. “Charles Dufort.”

Both men frowned in understanding. “Castleman Security?” Vance asked. “The guy that embezzled the reconstruction money?” 

Nate, bent low over his sheet, nodded. “Yeah, one of our first jobs. Jenkins is on here, too.”

Vance grabbed a sheet for himself. “I got a senator here and another congressman. Dead now, though. Accident.” His eyes narrowed. “A lieutenant colonel with supplies. This one’s an Italian arms dealer.”

“A sheik,” Sophie added, tapping on the second of four neat columns. “Seventy-three. A thousand dollars, I think it means.”

The men responded in unison: “For what?” 

“I don’t know, my cryptography skills are rudimentary at best.” 

Nate snorted. “It’s a talley.”

“All people that he did business with. Blackmail material, maybe.”

“Or a safety net.” Sophie gently placed her sheet on the table. “Business archives.”

Vance dropped the page he was holding. “But why? Why now? He had years to go after it. What changed?”

She looked at Nate and guilt surged through her. 

_ Because I’ve been trying to find a way around this. I’ve been protecting  _ you _!  _ He’d been so honest that day, so wounded… and scared. Willing to go and kill a man in cold blood for them, no matter if he never wanted to do that again in his life. Just so that he could keep them away from Moreau. At the expense of his own soul if necessary. 

Because that was what he did. And if Nate had been their black king, Eliot had taken an oath as his knight. Not exactly white. Or shining. More soft and human. Grumpy and sometimes ill-tempered but always, always true to this one thing: better him than anybody else. 

“Moreau changed,” she said.

Nate flung his sheet onto the others and turned against the table, arms loosely crossed and his eyebrows furrowed darkly over his eyes. “We took down Moreau.”

“But that was three years ago.” 

“For two of those three years,” Nate said. “Eliot was with us. Untouchable.” 

“And just because Moreau was out of the picture didn’t mean his organization was disabled. The CIA and whoever else had their hands in it took months to unravel everything and hide all the evidence pertaining to them.” Sophie smiled. “Getting involved at that point probably would only have resulted in the wrong kind of attention. And it seems, Marx is a very careful, detail-oriented man.” 

Vance glanced at the papers and nodded. “They had Moreau in prison. Didn’t mean he’d stay there. We all know how that goes.” He glanced from one to the other, shrugging like his government and his organization had not dabbled in propping up criminals if the results justified the means. 

And Nate…years ago, he might still have judged Vance for it, before he’d become who he’d always meant to be. A thief, dabbling with the mob and the CIA, people like the Italian. And them, of course. Become one of them. 

He shrugged. “But three years? With every year, the resources at Moreau’s disposal dwindled and made it more unlikely for him to escape.”

“It’s not just Moreau, though. Eliot changed after Moreau was gone.” Her fingers brushed along the crate’s edge, eyeing the frieze inside. The beauty, not the value. “Three years is long enough for him to feel safe, too. To let some of the paranoia go. Hardison, Parker…” 

The memory of Parker’s excited call was still fresh, not quite two days ago. 

“Quinn.” Eliot did not normally talk about his lovers, though he sometimes spoke loudly without saying anything. “Eliot’s never been with someone that long. Let alone someone who could actually be dangerous to him.”

“He got sloppy.” Vance rubbed a hand over his face, sighing deeply into the motion. 

“He started to live again.” Sophie snapped without thinking or taking the time to analyze his tone. “He started to actually let people in. That’s not a  _ bad _ thing.”

“It got him this time, though.” Nate avoided her eyes before he finally faced her head-on with an apologetic smile. “And he’ll know it.”

“But it’s different. He’s not alone anymore. He  _ wasn’t _ alone when he faced Moreau. And now, he’s got Quinn with him. He’s got  _ us.” _

_ “ _ We only have to convince him to let us protect him, for one,” Nate reminded her. “That’ll be virtually impossible to begin with, Sophie. And then take out Marx and whatever info he has on them.” 

 

~~~

 

“I can’t find it is the problem.” Hardison was staring from the screen of the laptop that had replaced the crate on the table, his big, soft eyes drawn with worry, an exhausted pallor to the normally rich dark brown of his skin. “I’m in their company network and the shooting range’s, Parker brought me into his home system. This guy is unbelievably clean with his data.” 

Nate nodded from his seat on the leather sofa, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. He looked so calm and collected. It took knowing him to see the faint tension running through his shoulders and how he desperately kept it in check for Hardison’s sake.

“Where would you hide it?”

“Me?” Hardison snorted. “My own server.”

“And if you wanted to hide it from someone like you? Let’s say—Chaos?”

“I wouldn’t...he’s not that good, Nate. It hurts when you say shit like that, Nate”

“Hypothetically speaking, Hardison. It’s all hypothetical.”

“Well, hypothetically, if I had to hide something from Chaos…offline and portable.”

Nate sent him a photo he had snapped earlier from the electronic bit they’d found in the tablet. “Like this?”

“Yeah, that’s…is that shrink-wrapped? That’s a stripped thumb drive. I… Lemme real quick…” Silence settled for a moment, then Hardison yelped. 

“Jesus! That thing is ancient. One gigabyte. Can you…”

His eyes flicked to Nate’s hand reaching for the thumb drive. “No wait, do  _ not _ plug that into your laptop. Use the phone. If that thing is that old, Android hadn’t been invented yet. No way they had a fitting virus. I mean, it’s unlikely but eh. Dun dun  _ dun _ .”

Vance, facing them over the notebook from where he leaned against the other side of the table, rolled his eyes with the kind of fondness that Hardison seemed to elicit from most bystanders. 

Nate, as usual when he wasn’t conning someone, was oblivious to most expression of human emotion in the room.

“But it’s from 2003. It cannot hold the data he has on you and Leverage. So where is it.”

“Not in his safe,” Parker whispered. “And not in his work safe either. It’s not at the shooting range. Aaaaand…Hey Shelley, does that look like data to you?” A low voice mumbled in the background, eliciting a soft, thoughtful hum from their thief. 

“It’s not at the lodge either. He has to have it on him or some place totally different.”

“Parker…” Nate looked like he wanted to say more but shut his mouth with one of those proud little smiles, barely there but so deep it came straight from his heart, before he evened out his expression once more. “Ok, so we need to spook him enough to give away that location before we can take him out. How?”

Sophie looked at the antiques on the table. “We only have Eliot and Quinn. If Marx was that thorough, he knows both Nate and me.” 

“And we won’t leave Eliot there any longer than absolutely necessary,” Nate added, his tone carefully neutral. When Sophie glanced over, she found him looking straight ahead, a minuscule smile on his lips. He knew a secret the others didn’t, trying to convince them they were at the same level.

Vance shook his head. “I will never understand how you can live with the man and so grossly underestimate him.”

“Oh, this is not a question of underestimating him. We  _ know  _ what he can take.”

“It’s about much we’re willing to do to him or ask of him. Someone has to care for him, too.” Sophie kept her voice deliberately soft, let the words do the works of opening Vance to the idea. Reminding him of friendship, of what friends should be to each other. Just a gentle note for him to maybe follow up on. 

“But he can take it,” Vance argued, sure in his words, even as a deep frown settled on his face.

“And if it’s about the team, he will. Whatever necessary,” Nate agreed.

“But is it necessary?”

Nate leaned on the table, close to the phone and took a deep breath. “Parker, I’m gonna tell you something and I need you to tell me if Quinn can pull it off.”

 

~~~

 

Parker leaned back on the roof of the lodge where Marx’s guards slept, her feet anchoring her on the shingles, slippery with autumn wetness and a fallen leaf or five. She could walk that angle of the roof on her hands and blindfolded. But Shelley couldn’t. Shelley was too big and too broad, all muscle and athleticism. Hardison called him a tank. 

Still, he moved silently below her, in through the open skylight and into the office-storage-game room.

At this time of night, a little more than an hour before the morning shift had to show up for duty, nobody in the house moved. And out here, only two guards trampled around the house, always in the same intervals, as if they  _ wanted  _ someone to get past them. Stupid. 

Nate talked in her ear while she watched the stars blink in and blink out behind racing clouds. Blink in and blink out. Never quite there and gone again, shifting and surviving. It was cold, yes, but not really. Clear. Silent. Uncomplicated. 

Not: this is too tangled and you have to cut the knot. Just clear, silent, Uncomplicated. 

Not: this hurts too much because Eliot hurts and Quinn hurts and she hurt and didn’t know how to make it stop. 

Not: People are like locks and sometimes you have to be fiddly and be patient. 

Sometimes you just stole the key.

“Yeah, he can do it.” 

Will, she added, when Nate didn’t really sound surprised. Because Quinn was like a mirror, always smiling and joking and throwing what people saw back at them. Where Parker had learned to not be there, Quinn had learned to be what he needed. And he would do it. For Eliot. 

And they’d have to do something for him in return. 

She rolled to her knees to stick her head through the window. Just checking on Shelley and why he took so long. 

“Hey.” Shelley looked up at her too loud whisper. “What’d you find?” 

He moved aside.

Boxes. Boxes with things. Small boxes with canisters and syringes inside. 

When Parker didn’t understand, his pretty mouth kicked up in that dolphin grin he did. “3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate.” He almost didn’t stumble over the words. Parker did. 

“Why do they have…?”

Frowning, she grabbed a canister and a syringe that said Midazolam. Oh…

His grin grew. Pretty, like a dolphin. A very, very evil dolphin waggling his brows. 

“Oh yeah,” he nodded and so did she. 

“How much?”

 

~~~

 

As Quinn walked into the interrogation room the next morning, sharp in his black suit and midnight blue tie—hoping how much Eliot would appreciate the irony—his partner already was already sitting, tied to “his” chair. One of the guards outside sported a fresh bruise. 

Reimann sat upstairs, nursing his own cup of Starbucks, happy for today to watch. 

He’d laughed at Quinn’s invitation, deceptively friendly in a way that had made the hairs on Quinn’s arms rise. “There will be other opportunities.”  Words Quinn did not care to think of as he walked into that room. 

“And good morning, Eliot,” Quinn said. He took slow, measured steps that led him around Eliot’s chair and echoed in the empty room like the ominous drumbeat of an execution. 

“Are we still debating the the value of your friends’ lives over some Mesopotamian clay?” 

Their eyes locked. Quinn raised his cup and smiled. 

Eliot growled, giving them all the time they needed to recognize his reluctance. 

“Give me a map!”

  
  



	8. Shiver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody :)  
> You might have noticed a shift to a bi-weekly posting schedule. That's because my writing schedule and my beta's editing schedule don't really line up. :(  
> At all. Also, my life sucks ^^  
> I'm trying to work around it by writing faster but eh...  
> You probably know how well that goes. 
> 
> This chapter gets two extra things: A song and a warning.
> 
> The warning is for torture and for sexualized torture. All is under control and it never goes past light touches but it's still some emotionally charged stuff. 
> 
> The song is: Mumford & Sons - Thistle and Weeds  
> Imagine me hacking almost 3000 words down to this song while apologizing to Quinn the whole time. 
> 
> I swear, I'm gonna make it better.

The shivering didn’t stop after they dragged him back into the ice cold cell. No hypothermia to kill the pain in his hands this time.

Pain was good, though. Life-affirming.

He flexed his fingers, just a little, just enough to press the swollen flesh against the concrete wall.

Not his back, not his head. He had to lean forward. Retain body temperature. Hold on.

Wait them out. Find the rhythm of his heart over the chatter of his teeth.

He barely had time to settle into the dark when the cell door opened—newly installed, perfectly fitted—and Quinn’s big form slipped into the room.

“Missing me already?” Eliot quipped and let the sudden tension seep out of his shoulders. The joke came on the wings of a lopsided smile that he allowed himself, despite his injured cheek and eye. But damn, it hurt. Everything hurt. Locked muscles, tendons bruised and torn. Skin and nerves exposed to the cold draft. Bones grinding on each other. The soft clicking of broken ribs with every breath he drew.

“Not my fault you’re so irresistible, darlin’.” Quinn lifted a hand to his ear in an automatic motion, still unused to the sensitivity of their coms. “Hardison, take me off coms until the next guard.”

He leaned against the door for a fleeting moment, to turn his phone screen on and, like last time, the cold light turned him into someone he’d never been to Eliot. He looked up with the grim cool of a murderer, boyish face nothing but jaw and cheekbones and narrow lips brutal, his normally annoyingly cheeky curls cropped this short. In the faint light, his suit appeared black on black but Eliot had seen it earlier and recognized the deep blue of the dress shirt instantly, matching tie and all. Quinn had worn the same suit the first time they met, when they had beaten each other within an inch of their lives. Here and now, it made him look even harsher and the expression barely softened as he crossed the room.

He crouched down in front of Eliot and touched his shoulder with the familiarity of a brother in arms, in his hand yet another bottle of sports drink and an energy bar. He opened both before he handed them to Eliot and stood to move behind him.

“C’mon,” he murmured, “let’s get you warmed up.”  

“I’m filthy,” Eliot disputed. He got a noncommittal hum in response. 

Quinn nudged Eliot away from the wall and carefully, very carefully moved between him and the concrete. There was awkwardness and cursing involved but finally, they sat, Quinn’s knees easily raised on either side of Eliot’s hips and his armed curled around Eliot’s middle.

“What you are is definitely freezing,” he said, tugging Eliot closer against the expanse of his chest, wrapping him in the furnace heat of his body. And if he was trying to be subtle as he shifted his hand to Eliot's throat, he was failing.

“Stop fussing. Your medic is showing.”

Quinn didn’t try to deny it. “What’s your pulse?”

“Around seventy. Slightly elevated. It’s fine.”

There were a dozen ways to berate him for getting too close and personal. Eliot chose none.

“How late?” he asked.

The arms just curling around his middle paused. “Three a.m.”

He didn’t ask whether Eliot had managed to get any sleep. It was irrelevant. Forty hours wasn’t even close to the worst he’d gone without, not counting the additional stress of everything else. Still not North Korea.

Eliot leaned into the embrace and closed his eyes. It wasn’t like that, like softness between them.

Wasn’t like that when Quinn’s soft drawl caressed along the shell of Eliot’s ear. “Shit’s gonna hit the fan soon. They got the crate. Marx is on his way.”

“Showdown.”

“Yeah. This is gonna get ugly, pal. Not gonna lie.” Eliot looked down and saw Quinn’s hand uncurl to present a pill in his palm like a magic trick.

He eyed it warily. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah...yeah, you will be. Ibuprofen. Eight hundred.”

“Tell me,” Eliot said and took the pill.

“Talked to Sophie.” Quinn’s voice barely rose above a low murmur, the intimacy of bunkers and trenches at night. “I can’t stop Reimann.”

Eliot stilled, for a moment pondering if he should lie. “No, you can’t.”

He should say more, something comforting maybe to assuage the worry he’d heard in Quinn’s voice. As he would’ve done with Hardison or Parker. Instinct. Protect the team. Except Quinn wasn’t part of the team, wasn’t soft-hearted Hardison, or Parker who sometimes got swamped by her own ideas of what she should be feeling.

Quinn...was Quinn.

“We got a plan?” Eliot asked, pressing closer into the warmth, pragmatism forever prevailing.

“Deter him...subtly. Push him a little toward...things you prefer.” He huffed a bitter breath against Eliot’s neck. “But I’d need to know your hitlist of your preferred and most hated torture methods.”

Eliot smiled. Genuinely smiled. Not for amusement but this felt so normal, his own answer like one he’d given a hundred times to Quinn already. Granted, then it had all been theoretical musings. Shoptalk between hitters. “You know what I prefer.”

Quinn didn’t disappoint. “Pain. Beatings.” A pause. “Waterboarding. Because you’re a crazy son of a bitch with a control fetish.” His low laugh reverberated against Eliot’s back. Warm, alive, easy.

“Says the man who keeps a packed bag everywhere he goes, including my bedroom, in case he wants to leave.”

“Needs to. Needs to leave.”

“Is there really a difference? When you need to get out, you need to get out.” He pondered and then decided to go for it. Those two already knew about each other's quirks. “Parker does it, too. Never uses them. Like a safety net. Just needs to know it’s there.”

Close as they were, Eliot felt Quinn’s heartbeat speed up and the gusts of his breath more forceful against the skin of his neck. It took Quinn only a moment to smooth the fledgling fight or flight reaction over. Chances were he hadn’t even noticed. Eliot let him, picking up the actual topic instead. “I'm not fond of being drugged…and intimate touches from strangers," he admitted.

Something in Quinn stilled in understanding and he lifted his hands off immediately. "No touches, alright. Guess I’ll make that happen."

It took some maneuvering and a not so accidental elbow to his ribs to look at Quinn. "Not you. I'd rather it be you...before Reimann gets any weird ideas." That came out wrong. “We’ve had sex, Quinn. Plenty. Your hands have been all over me already. Multiple times. I’m sure we’re past that stage.”

Quinn cocked his head, sizing Eliot up and down, no comment on the admission. "How far?"

"Nothing that definitely belongs in the bedroom."

Quinn's smile grew embarrassingly fond, worse for the fact that Eliot knew where it came from. "I keep forgetting how private you are.” His eyes shifted. ”Alright. I'll make sure of it."

“It’s weird,” Eliot said into the ensuing silence. “Not being cut off and alone, I mean.”

“Hoping blindly that you get lucky or maybe someone gives enough of a crap to bother...yeah.” Quinn looked up and studied the ceiling. “Never really thanked you for Kiev. I mean, I had it handled but it was nice.”

“You. Seven Russians trying to doublecross you. Handled.”

“I’ve got my ass out of worse situations all by my lonesome.” His gaze dropped back to Eliot’s face and he attempted a smile. “Gonna get yours out, too. Few hours and you’ll be back with the crazy kids.”

“It’ll be easier if you tell me what crazy plan y’all cooked up.” He studied the eyes that looked so much darker here than their normal velvety brown, the wry twist to Quinn’s lips that hid some pretty sharp if occasionally atrocious humor.  Not Hardison. Not Parker.

Just Quinn who refused to have this go any other way. Quinn who was easy and that was the problem. Quinn who smiled, always smiled, and brushed the darkness away with banter. Who was fine, always fine, even if he showed up on Eliot’s doorstep bleeding and bruised and slept fifteen hours on the first sign of safety.

Quinn who marched into danger even though he should’ve turned around the moment he learned that this thing between him and Eliot was over.

Quinn who hovered like a mother hen and still wouldn’t admit he cared and brought with him warmth, of his body and the warmth that settled into Eliot’s chest as Quinn laid out in hushed tones what was a basic, very basic idea of a plan. Eliot didn’t have the heart to tell him how likely it was for this to go wrong.

“I’m glad you’re here. Just want you to know, ok?” he said and was rewarded with the pleasure of a blush creeping up Quinn’s cheek.

“Aw man, don’t say stuff like—”

Eliot brushed Quinn’s lips with his own, a fleeting touch that turned into a hovering moment when Quinn didn’t immediately respond, his hand frozen halfway to Eliot’s face as if to stop him.

A confused noise turned into a slow exhale and his hand ended up carefully framing Eliot’s face. Eliot almost felt him swallow the words that neither of them would say. 

Goodbye, maybe. Thank you. Or I’m sorry.

Quinn tasted of cafe latte, skim milk, no frills, and of a faint memory of double chocolate chip cookies. What he called breakfast of champions. Because he was no less of an idiot than Hardison. And no less crazy than Parker.

“I’ll get you out,” he murmured between a gentle caress of lips and tongue and the overly tender touch of his hands. “Trust me.”

“Ok.” Eliot nipped on Quinn’s lower lip. “Ok.”

Maybe it sounded like 'Fuck, I missed you.'

~~~

 

Vance’s phone rang somewhere over the Mediterranean.

“Yes?” He shot up from his seat. “Already? What do you mean, that ‘wasn’t Marx’? Where was Marx?”

He froze, knowledge dawning with horror on his face. “That’s too soon…”

Across from him, Nate sat up straighter and grabbed his own phone.

“Hardison? Where are Shelley’s men? We need them  _ now.” _

 

~~~

 

Not even an hour later, Quinn hurried down the stairs, cursing Marx and his henchman all the way down.

Reimann must have done that on purpose, he must have: handed Quinn the phone with a knowing grin, all the while he played with the canister in his hand. And of course,  _ now _ Marx had given him the missing info. Not all of them, Quinn had gotten more out of Ford earlier, but enough to paint a picture.

Enough to imagine how much of a free reign he’d given Reimann.

Quinn burst through the safety door cutting the cell-slash-interrogation room off from the rest of the house and was greeted by laughter. The cruel laughter of men with a certain kind of power that hinged not on their own achievements but on the helplessness of their victim.

An empty plastic bottle flew against the observation window, a few drops of water spattering the glass. Beyond, one of the guards gripped Eliot’s hair and pulled his head back, laughing louder when a surge of water bubbled from their prisoner’s mouth

One second to breathe, get control. One second for calm, breathe in and out. Settle.

Quinn slammed his fist against the window and jerked his head toward the corridor when Reimann looked up.

The door opened not ten seconds later

“What?”

Quinn let Reimann’s aggressive snap wash over him, diving through his own irritation—and fear—into the professional calm beyond. 

“What did you do?” 

“What did I do? My job!” Reimann argued immediately and stood straighter. In the room, Eliot bit off a scream.

“Good. You should. Now, I’m asking you again: What did you do to him?”

Reimann’s eyes shifted to the windows, over both their reflections and to Eliot, finding himself in the unwavering scrutiny of Quinn when he finally scraped together enough courage to look back.

“Nothing, just gave him something to drink.” The cruelty settled easily on his face. “Agent 15. I had a few canisters lying around.” As did the creepy anticipation in his smile.

It was Parker’s voice in his ear that stopped Quinn from punching Reimann in the face. Her fake cheerful: “He did!”

Shelley’s voice sounded much less cheerful. “And now they’re open in his men’s bedrooms.” Shelley sounded pissed.

‘How much?’ The words hovered on Quinn’s tongue, control overridden by fear and then by cool, coldhearted knowledge. The nerve agent had a big safety margin. Incapacitating rather than deadly.

“Well.” Quinn turned his head in time to see one of the guards wrap a belt around Eliot’s neck. The other slammed his fist down on an open wound where Eliot’s fingernail should have been.

“They keep working him like that he won’t make it the thirty minutes until it takes effect.”

Shelley in his ear cursed. “We do what we can.”

Quinn pushed him, like Eliot’s cry of pain, to the far back of his own mind. Into the closet where kids went to hide from the monsters that lived in the daylight. 

He turned back to Reimann. “What do you think of playing bad cop and worse cop?”

“Depends on who’s worse,” Reimann answered.

Quinn laughed. “Oh…we both are. You’ll make him wish the pain would stop and I’ll make him wish it would start again.”

He took Reimann’s blooming grin for an answer and pushed through the door without urgency. No need to hurry this. Every minute wasted bought a minute at the end.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Quinn said.

Eliot glanced up. Blood dripped from his brow and colored his lips and chin crimson. A fresh cut adorned his broken cheekbone, hardly visible past the swollen flesh around his eye.

The same crimson splattered the ground around the bolted chair, both old and fresh. His hand bled.

Quinn waved the goons away. That they waited for Reimann to confirm before following said a lot. Just like the way they made sure the belt left burn marks when they pulled it off Eliot’s neck. Quinn touched there first, brushed his fingertips over the red stripes, rubbed his thumb over Eliot’s clenched jaw as if he were marking his territory.

“Hello Eliot,” he murmured. He let his hand drop lower, a slow caress along taut skin and a beautifully curved collarbone. “I hoped to avoid this…”

Like he tried to avoid the water dripping from Eliot’s hair; Agent 15 had a nasty little habit to be absorbed through the skin. Poor Eliot would already suffer enough. No need to suffer along, right?

Under Quinn’s fingers, muscles twitched and bunched, a faint shiver against the cold and the tight coil of a predator ready to spring. A pair of hooded blue eyes locked onto Quinn’s face as if he wanted to remember every detail for later. An unblinking promise. A  _ come at me _ . Lips parting on an involuntary breath when Quinn finally, leisurely circled a nipple. Anger that couldn’t hide the reaction—betrayal at the man who knew exactly how to touch him. 

In the background, Reimann snickered.

Quinn smiled.

He trailed his fingers along the prisoner’s throat as he moved around him, all too aware of the uncomfortable tension in Eliot’s body, the way his eyes followed as if he were scared of Quinn truly overstepping his bounds. Eliot snapped to attention as Quinn stepped behind him.

There was no give in his muscles under Quinn’s hands when Quinn leaned in, lips brushing Eliot’s ear.

“Let’s talk about Damien Moreau.”

Eliot’s head slammed back with the power of a jackhammer, making up for the awkward angle with a last-minute twist that must have hurt him. But not like the impact of his skull against Quinn’s temple.

A crack, a splash of blood.

Quinn laughed. Nothing fake there. Blood ran down his cheek.

“I think we might’ve touched a sore spot.”

Reiman moved forward, appreciation for Quinn’s kind of insanity in his eyes, or perhaps just appreciation for a chance to ram his fist in Eliot’s uncovered stomach.

"He wanted the crate and, surprise, someone knew where it was. I bet that someone knows what happened to it. Doesn't he, Eliot?" 

Reimann punctuated Quinn's words with his fists and the snap of a pocket knife.  Over the next minutes, Quinn wished he could make Eliot lose track of time, but with every punch and every cut, there was no sign of him phasing out. He took every ounce of pain they dished and grinned it away with bloody teeth.

Quinn paced the periphery of the scene, watching, counting the time until Eliot’s body would inevitably succumb to the first effects of the drug. In his ear, Shelley counted down with him.

“Twenty minutes out. Reinforcements are down.”

“Fifteen minutes out. How is he?”

“Injured, freezing, being tortured, so fucking hurry,” he hissed, Reimann and his goons too distracted by their fun to listen. Nobody would watch those tapes anymore and frankly, as the seconds ticked down, Quinn gave less and less of a fuck.

Blood ran down Eliot’s chest and arms, small rivulets like war paint that turned him into a memory of millennia past.

Achilles, indestructible yet so vulnerable if you knew. Did that make him Patroklos?

He met Eliot’s bloody gaze past Reimann’s shoulder and heard the same question, the same demand for the umpteenth time: “Where’s the crate?” until he had to step in.

“I don’t think he’s gonna tell you at this rate.”

Reimann’s head shot up. Behind him, the corners of Eliot’s mouth twitched up, just a second, but Quinn saw and had to fight the desire to roll his eyes.

“Physical violence is obviously not working and we’re on a schedule here. Schedule meaning, the boss is pissed.”

Reimann took a minute to fully stand and step back. As he turned to Quinn his eyes immediately caught on the cut on Quinn’s cheekbone and the blood he had let dry there. “So what? We ask nicely?”

“I mean, we could use the time until the 3-QNB takes effect to enhance its impression a little with... “ Quinn drew out the dramatic pause, a touch to his chin, scratching off some flaking blood, a smile. “What’s your general opinion on waterboarding?”

_ Let him come to his own conclusions. Don’t overdo it. Plant the idea then let it become his. _

Sophie Deveraux had been right, reminding Reimann of the fact that he was pummeling Eliot closer and closer to a physical breakdown wouldn’t stop him. Not that he likely would manage to physically break Eliot. When Eliot dug his feet in he became an immovable object with only Hardison and Parker his unstoppable forces.

Except, today, Quinn was the cosmic nudge that had to move Eliot out of the way before too much harm happened.

“I’m not releasing this guy from this chair.” Reimann blanched just a little. Funny how that went if people were suddenly faced with the thought of Eliot Spencer not helpless.

“No need to.”

Quinn waved Reimann to a corner of the dim interrogation room to explain and the more he told him, the more Reimann’s grin grew. Dumbass.

He let Quinn take over the preparations, let Quinn escape the scrutiny into the bathroom while he was tasked with keeping Eliot safe, bar from a few probably shitty, insults.

If he’d been less strung tight, Quinn would’ve have appreciated the irony much more. As it were, he barely appreciated the existence of irony.

“Guys, please tell me something positive. I need to get him out.”

“You will,” Nate Ford said, the connection crackling dangerously with the interferences of flight. “Eliot’s tough. He can take it.”

“Nate, man, I don’t know…” Hardison’s response was automatic, the first to remind them of Eliot’s limits, which everyone seemed to forget.

Quinn cut him off. “I know he can take it. Eliot can take more than any human should be able to.” He took a deep breath.

“But you don’t.” Sophie’s voice held a softness that he was pretty sure was supposed to lull him into a sense of trust that she’d then use to manipulate him into doing what she wanted.

He’d take it. “Yeah.”

In the soft silence that settled over coms, Shelley came through with cool, professional calm, intimate in the way of running operations, of interlocking gears. “Ten minutes max. We’re moving into position now.”

Ten minutes max. An element of insecurity that Quinn the operative deeply hated and that Quinn the man hungrily latched onto.

“Can you do it for Eliot?” Sophie again.

Can you grab this wash rag and fill a bucket of water and watch him struggle against it while the sharpness in his eyes faded and he slowly lost control of his muscles?

“Hey boyfriend,” Parker whispered, all the background clatter—people breathing, the low hum of jet engines, everything that you stopped noticing at some point—cutting out when Hardison put her over the others. “You got this.” Nothing else.

Quinn opened his eyes to the pitch dark and slammed his fist to the right, hitting the light switch dead on. He shoved away from the wall and snapped at Sophie the moment Hardison put them back into the com circuit.

“You know I will.”

 

Water splashed on Eliot’s feet as Quinn dropped the bucket next to him. The goons had left and only Reimann stood, too close for Quinn’s comfort but not yet close enough to endanger Eliot’s personal space.

Reason enough for Quinn to shove right in and mark his territory with a suggestive brush of his hand over their prisoner’s pecs and up his throat to grab Eliot’s chin in an iron grip.

“Did you miss me?”

Reiman thrived on power. So Quinn had to monopolize this particular kind and let Reimann in on it by sharing the visuals.

He let his thumb paint an inappropriate circle over Eliot’s jaw and leaned in, enough to telegraph the intent to kiss and stopped just outside Eliot’s reach.

Good thing Quinn didn’t have a voyeurism kink; after this, he’d lose it.

“I’m sure you know what’s to come.”

Quinn’s free hand trailed up the prisoner’s shoulder and the back of his neck.

Water splashed as Reimann dunked the rag into the bucket.

“I don’t fucking know where Moreau put it!”

“Oh really? Our sources say otherwise.” Quinn’s fingers threaded through Eliot’s hair at the back of his head. “He hired you straight out of Iraq, didn’t he? Why would he do that? You, a washed-out mercenary. So how did you buy in?”

Reimann pulled the rag from the bucket with great fanfare, exaggerated the water dripping for greater effect by shaking it just a little.

“You’re lying, Eliot. Me and my friend Reimann here, we don’t like liars. You know what happens to them?”

Quinn leaned out of the way as he jerked Eliot’s head back and Reimann slapped the dripping, stinking wet cloth over his exposed face.

“They get punished.”

Reimann grabbed a chipped coffee cup that swam on the bottom of the bucket and raised it high above Eliot’s head.

“The worse the lie…,” he said as he tipped the cup with hungry eyes and an almost shy blush of pleasure on his ruddy cheeks.

Quinn held Eliot’s head in place, gripping hair tight enough to tear out a few strands, just not tight enough that Eliot couldn’t turn his head in apparent panic. A twist to the left, dislodge the cloth over Quinn’s thumb against his jaw, allow for a small pocket of air to slip under.

Control, if he needed it. Trust, if he wanted to give it.

Power he handed Quinn that became a heady drug in itself as Eliot’s body surged against the restraints, breath sucking the cloth between his lips.

Reimann scooped up another cup and another, allowing for only short breaks in between.

Under Quinn’s hand, Eliot’s pulse spiked to close to ninety beats per minute, enough of a warning signal that Quinn tore the cloth down. He managed to fake a grin at the last second for Reimann’s sake.

A pair of wide-blown pupils stared up at him, black had almost completely overtaken the blue. A disoriented blink, the man wincing in the light of the overhead lamp. It took him almost five seconds to focus on Quinn.

“Oh splendid, the drug’s starting to work.”

“Good!” Reimann’s glee echoed with the innocence of a monster that didn’t know better, was born to be nothing but. A stark reminder that even among men like them there would always be a hierarchy—some made a conscious decision to stay on one side while others conquered the lands opposite with joy. “More?”

Quinn nodded and settled his hand securely against Eliot’s throat. “More.”

“We’re going in. Five minutes.” Shelley responded and through the com, Quinn heard someone’s neck break.

“No pause this time,” he ordered Reimann. “We need to use the drug’s first peak. Just break through.”

There was no first peak, the drug’s effect would get gradually worse and worse over the next hours, escalating from the photosensitivity to ataxia and a loss of mental control, hallucination, depending on how much Reimann had overdone it. But Reimann didn’t know that. Reimann was a simpleton who took what Marx had given him and threw it at one of the world’s most dangerous hitters in the hopes that some of what he did stuck.

He laughed as he poured and Eliot fought it and even Quinn would’ve have believed it if he hadn’t controlled the airflow under cloth himself.

Until he didn’t, let his hand slip downward, away from Eliot’s galloping pulse and over his pecs, circling his nipple under Reimann delighted gaze. Eliot screamed.

Someone gurgled their last breath through Shelley’s com.

Quinn tore the cloth down completely away from Eliot’s face. “Ready to talk, pal?”

Not ‘my friend’. Not Julien anymore.

Eliot fought to focus on Quinn’s face before he sank back against the chair.

“Washington,” he gasped. “Warehouse. Private lockup.”

A shot upstairs broke the moment. Reimann jerked away from Eliot and already moved toward the door just as Quinn started to yell, grabbed Eliot by the hair and got into his face. 

“Where! Give me a fucking address or I swear I’ll go after your friends and this, here, is nothing to what I’ll do to them.”

He hit Eliot because he had to and Reimann turned back and stared at him and he might not see the way Quinn closed his eyes but Eliot did and somehow that didn’t make it ok but Eliot croaked a street address in a warehouse district and a warehouse number and a row and then the automatic fire started upstairs and Quinn let go and whirled around to Reimann.

“GO! Tell Marx! I’ll take care of him.”

“The fuck’s going on?” Reimann tried to force back control of the situation.

“Press him!” Sophie ordered over coms between shots. Quinn pulled his MAC and thumbed off the safety, allowing Reimann to see for just one moment the truth in his eyes, the knowledge that someone would die and it would hurt. The who…?

“Go!” Reimann recoiled from the fire in Quinn’s eyes that had smoldered in him for the last twenty-four hours, waiting for the right moment to ignite.  “Inform Marx. Me and Eliot got a nine-millimeter date.”

Dangle a bigger power in front of him on the adrenaline high of the last one.

Reimann turned and slammed the door shut on his way to the back exit.

Eliot and Quinn both sagged with relief.

“You ok?” Eliot asked, a little slurred, because he was who he was: pathologically unable to care for himself first even if he was in big trouble.

Quinn snorted. “Hell, no.” He holstered the gun. “Shelley? Reimann is out the door.” A deep breath. “Have fun.”

Shelley confirmed.

Quinn loosened Eliot’s restraints and pulled him up.

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah,” Eliot croaked and spit out water, swaying into Quinn’s grip as he stood. “Lets...you’re not gonna carry me.”

“Oh, like a damsel in distress?” Quinn’s adrenaline turned into a chuckle. “Bridal style? Watch me.”

Reimann was gone when he dragged Eliot to the backdoor. On the other side of that door, the darkness of the hills; behind them, a firefight.

Eliot slowly lifted his head. “Really?”

Quinn shrugged and pulled him along.

 


	9. The Smart Ways to Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Look who's early :)  
> Biggest thanks to my betas who each add something invaluable to this endeavour and my writing.  
> Thank you!
> 
> This chapter has a song, too.  
> "Underneath your Clothes" by Shakira.  
> That's where the title comes from.  
> I'll leave it to you to decide who it's for ;)
> 
> Enjoy! After the last two chapters you deserve something nice.

“Backdoor clear?” Quinn pulled Eliot into the alcove next to the door.

“Backdoor clear. Reimann’s heading for the parking lot.” And Shelley was following him, the excitement in his voice said. “Not gonna happen.”

The door itself was one of those sturdy cellar doors that kept weather and wildlife out. Back when the range had still been in use, this had probably been a mud room. There still were hooks in the wall to carry the hunters’ coats and a rack on the floor to hold their shoes.

Only as Quinn looked down, he realized the problem, the one glaring flaw in their plan.

“Shit.”

Eliot followed Quinn’s gaze and rolled his eyes, grumbling already before the other had a chance to voice his concern.

“What?” Shelley snapped.

“Eliot has no shoes.”

A beat of silence spread over the coms. Eliot opened his hand, eyes wordlessly demanding an earbud of his own.

“Oh…” Parker said. Even the sound of automatic fire from upstairs paused.

Eliot had none of it. “I walked barefoot through the Afghan mountains! This is nothing.”

Quinn didn’t doubt him there but that wasn’t the point. He slid out from under Eliot’s good shoulder, leaving him near enough to a wall to give him support if he needed it.

Then he nudged open the door.

Across the gravel-strewn backyard, a small path wound up into the woods along the hill where it branched into several snaking trails that all ended somewhere in the woods. And halfway up that looming incline lay their waypoint one.

And down that path, the gods’ favor to their wayward son, came running one of Reimann’s Russians. He had the subtlety of a Siberian bear. Not that anyone cared.

“I’m not sure I concur with your definition of ‘clear’, Shelley, but I’ll take it,” Quinn murmured into the com as he reached for the light switch. Eliot was faster and turned it off, guessing Quinn’s intentions before the thought had fully formed. And that was why he was so unbelievably good.

“Be right back,” Quinn whispered, and grinned with adrenaline flooding his blood.

 

He came back two minutes later, a pair of standard-issue combat boots in hand.

Eliot eyed them with distrust and reached out to swipe a finger over the leather, frowning as they came away with a fine sheen of dirt and blood.

"I don't wanna walk a mile in their shoes,” he said. And they were a size or two too big as well.

"Luckily, it’s only half a mile, at most."

Quinn knelt in front of him, tying the laces, giddy with elation at the minute lift around Eliot’s mouth. Draping his suit jacket around Eliot’s shoulder’s proved a little more complicated with the injured hand but Quinn managed to fashion a good enough sling out of his tie.

 

They crossed the backyard in a swaying hurry. Eliot, though smaller, was still a considerable weight of muscles and attitude against Quinn’s side that deterred him off a straight path more than kept him on it.

And then they were out. Safe in the silence of fog-wreathed trees and the cover of barren branches swaying idly above them.

The air smelled of moisture thick enough to cross into light rain. The gunshots faded almost to background “plop, plop”, no longer a memory of war.

They didn’t talk on their way along the path. Quinn gave no apology for the drugs. Eliot didn’t ask for one. He trotted, half leaning on Quinn over the uneven ground, grunting in annoyance whenever he missed a step. As if it were his fault.

 

They’d just reached the drop-off point, ten slow and steady minutes later. The coms had started failing not long ago, with just enough connection to know the fight below was over.

Which was why Quinn didn’t expect the clipped tones of two men ahead.

Without giving Eliot time to protest, or offering a warning, Quinn swept him in a fireman carry and half dove, half slid down the scarped ground toward the manger fifteen feet off the path.

Eliot grunted once but whatever sound of pain he wanted to make died behind his lips, even as Quinn dumped him only semi-gently behind the cover of the wood.

“Shelley…how many did you get?”

The line crackled. “...many...what?”

“How many did you kill?” Quinn hissed with more urgency, reaching out for Eliot’s shoulder to stop him from swaying on his knees and overcompensating his shot balance.

“Uh…got seven. Some...still alive. ‘m after...mann. Why?”

Quinn thunked his forehead against the wood and rolled to his knees. “Two of the goons played ‘Drew Barrymore stayed at home and called the police’.”

Silence.

Then.

“What?”

“What?” Eliot rolled his eyes.

“Nevermind. Quinn out.”

It obviously took more than a military grade incapacitating agent to subdue Eliot’s ability to judge people.

The judgment turned into confusion, then appreciation when Quinn dug into the loose earth below the manger and dragged several vacuum-sealed packs from the ground.

“Parker,” Quinn explained. Eliot only raised an eyebrow and might have been impressed.

Quinn decided to take it as such and tore open the one that held the Northface jacket with his teeth.

His suit jacket became a sitting blanket when he draped the parka tightly around Eliot’s shoulders.

“Gotta take care of this. You good?”

Eliot grumbled. “Knife.”

“You can barely stand.”

“ _Knife._ ”

Quinn pulled his second combat knife from his boot and handed it over.

Eliot’s left hand curled painfully slowly around the handle and then, as if he didn’t quite know what more to do, he lowered his hand into his lap, his eyes challenging Quinn to say anything.

A challenge Quinn happily accepted.

“If you come after me, I’ll whoop your ass, Eliot. I swear.”

“Yeah, yeah. Can’t wait t’ see you try. Get goin’.”

He smiled. It looked real so Quinn didn’t call him out on it.

 

The clouds scattered the full moon’s light into a dramatic ghostly ambiance, tinting the trees black and the grass almost silver. The fog swallowed sounds and shapes alike as Quinn dashed over the grass and up the leaf-strewn embankment.

Once again, he was glad for the notorious Oregon moisture that softened leaves to near soundlessness in a matter of minutes. He was less glad that it had long since crept under his thin dress shirt and turned his skin the kind of tingling clammy painful that would start hampering him soon, now that he no longer had the exertion of dragging Eliot to keep himself warm.

Eliot, who still didn’t show any signs of being cold because his body was slowly losing the ability to regulate his temperature. But that was a problem for later.

‘Later’ being after Quinn took care of the two Russians—no, one Russian and one Kazakh—skulking around the path ahead, huddled around their covered flashlight.

The fastest option would be bullets to their heads, but the noise would draw attention they needed to avoid at all cost.

He crawled up the last few inches to peek through the thick underbrush and considered the knife and garotte, and then he considered Eliot.

The thought of him sitting on the wet grass going all moral over Quinn killing people for him didn’t appease the hunger in Quinn’s chest. If anything, it added a certain layer of evil to the cold practicalities of war - the wish to make them pay.

This game, here, with Parker gone to move her own chess pieces and Hardison far away and safe, left only Quinn, Shelley, and Eliot as the actors. And somewhere between eleven and thirty-one trained killers.

This was the game they played best, the one without a rule book. Except…Eliot. Because Eliot would find a way to load those two guys onto his conscience.

He pushed back down the embankment, behind the treeline that concealed him from the path, and started the slow trek to circle around them.

Objectively seen, killing them also wasn’t really fair. After all, they had put so much intelligent cowardice into their survival.

It took him five minutes, and when he finally reached a breach in the damn pointy shrubbery, they still hadn’t moved, like a pair of lost ducklings waiting for their mama to pick them up. The flashlight turned out to be a smartphone that they were fruitlessly trying to make work, and that kept them busy enough that they didn’t notice his approach.

They deserved it.

“Hey! Мамка твоя знает, что ты тут?”

Before they had the chance to react to his words, Quinn threw the knife.

The first went down with a choked cry and the blade in his thigh. His friend had no time to recover. Quinn lunged forward, his fist slamming down with all the power of his almost two hundred pounds and all the rage he hadn’t been able to take out on Reimann.

He realized too late that the Russian’s elbow came up at the same time.

No time to dodge. Quinn trusted his wider reach and the fact that Newton was an asshole for maximum impact, twisting his head at the last second to avoid the broken nose.

Something gave under his knuckles, a sickening crunch. Silence.

Blood flooded his mouth while he rolled to his feet, the MAC in his hand.

“You have...blegh…”

Quinn spit a glob of blood to the side. The Kazakh's eyes tracked it, but he was clever enough to stay kneeling, fingers tightly pressed around the blade in his leg.

“You have two choices here, tovarishch. You give me my knife, wrap a bandage around your leaky part, take your friend, and haul ass before the FBI arrives. We’re all just doing our jobs here, right?” Quinn pointed to the unconscious man on the ground. “Or I shoot you. Which would greatly inconvenience all of us.”

 

Eliot rolled his head over to him as Quinn strolled back onto the small clearing.

His hand with the knife still lay in his lap, his legs stretched in front of him in the wet grass.

Then his gaze flicked from the split lip to Quinn’s hand and the corners of his mouth kicked up.

“You let ‘em walk?” he asked, murmured really, but in the silent night he could have whispered and it would be heard.

“They can cover our tracks.” Quinn knelt next to him and reached for the rest of the packages buried under the manger.

Clothes first.

Getting Eliot dressed proved easy, in the wobbly kind of way of people who had trouble accepting the fact their balance was shot.

“How long do I have?” Eliot finally asked as Quinn haphazardly taped his injured fingers around a bandage roll. It would keep them in place until he had more time, more light and less dirt.

Quinn checked his watch. “Between two and three hours for full onset.”

“I’m warm.”

“Oh, trust me, pal, I’m definitely aware.”

Quinn helped him stand and strapped him into the light climbing rig Parker had thrown in “just to be sure.”

“I shouldn’t be.”

Quinn tugged the straps tight and let his hand rest on Eliot’s shoulder a moment longer, let himself feel the fine tremors that ran through his body.

“I know what they gave me.” Eliot’s eyes shifted away from Quinn’s face, off to the gravel path and the noise of the guards trying to make their way into the woods. When his gaze came back, it brushed not accidentally over the bulge of Quinn’s shoulder holster. He shook his head with clenched teeth, never quite meeting Quinn’s eyes.

“Eliot…”

Quinn understood. Killing, once you knew how, was too easy. Eliot Spencer had made the conscious decision to put the safety on the deadly weapon that he was. Emphasis on “conscious”.

Most drugs that lowered inhibitions made their target sleepy.

3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate did the opposite.

But Quinn, despite all their jokes, could take Eliot Spencer at his best, let alone toddling around like a brain-addled puppy.

“Quinn!”

Quinn might also be responsible for the situation, and he intended to see it through.

He dropped his hand and grabbed the backpack that had been among the packages. He shoved the empty plastic wraps inside along with the useful rest. The machete that Parker had hidden in the roof of the manger came on top.

“It’ll be fine.”

The moonlight cast sharp shadows on Eliot's face, the fresh night air washing away the stink of captivity and pain. He leaned against the weather-worn wood, looking casual in the way that might fool the passing observer. It took someone who’d spent his life with drugs to recognize the restless twitch in his fingers, not hidden by the way Eliot’s unbound fist opened and closed, or the sluggish way his dilated pupils tracked Quinn’s movements.

“When the hallucinations set in…”

Quinn scoffed, paused the task of donning his own rig just long enough to show Eliot the syringe he had pilfered along with Eliot’s prized necklace and his wallet.

“I’m prepared, darlin’. I say I got you, I got you, ok?”

Eliot’s eyes tracked the syringe, understanding dawning several seconds too late. When it did, he looked away to hide the press of his lips, the second he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Quinn slid the syringe back into his pocket, granting Eliot that moment of perceived privacy before he tethered the two rigs. He didn’t intend to climb but he hadn’t intended to let Eliot get drugged either. Yet here they were.

“Listen, Eliot…” He snapped the spring hook into place on Eliot’s rig and tugged on the straps one last time. “I trust you to tell me when you’re losing it. But I’ll need you to trust me to be enough of an asshole to just knock you out when you don’t. Deal?”

He could’ve sworn Eliot’s eyes softened as he looked down before he—carefully—pushed away from the manger. “Do I have a choice?”

Quinn shrugged into the parka and shouldered the backpack. He didn’t dignify Eliot’s tired question with an answer.

“Let’s go.”

 

~~~

 

They finally stumbled upon the old ranger station an hour later. The moon had sunken behind the hill they’d just scaled and left only silver clouds trawling idly across the darkest morning sky.

The clearing had already been reclaimed by nature, overgrown grass and saplings inching closer and closer to the old half-stone house in the middle. Its shingles had turned green already as if it wanted to become part of nature itself.

Sitting right below a hilltop and the only access road long grown over, the ranger station remained a well-maintained secret among serious hikers.

“Good thing you have weird hobbies,” Eliot murmured, leaning heavily against Quinn’s side.

“No weirder than cooking.”

“This’s part of the job. Hobbies are to get away from the job.”

Eliot had his fingers curled tightly into Quinn’s jacket, swaying on his feet, his skin a mottled landscape of ashen white and deep red blotches. His labored breaths against Quinn’s shoulder were the only stain on the perfectly lonely silence of trees and a nearby creek, where nothing mattered and no one came for you, except those you carried with you.

They shouldn’t have made the trek in an hour but Eliot, once he moved, never stopped until absolutely forced to.

“C’mon.” Eliot made it three steps before his knees buckled, but Quinn still had a hold on him. He didn’t waste time to ask for permission, he just picked him up.

 

Inside, the hut looked just as well-worn: the wooden floors scuffed, windows blinded by time and the elements. Someone had dusted the floor. Thanks, Parker.

And someone had dropped off his duffel with supplies. And a big box of extras.

“Thanks, Parker,” he murmured as he carefully lowered Eliot’s body onto the wobbly single chair.

Once seated, most of the tension keeping him upright seemed to leave Eliot’s body. He dropped his head against Quinn’s chest with a soft groan of relief. Something Quinn was sure he wouldn’t have dared with anybody else.

Quinn couldn’t help but raise his hand and run his fingers through Eliot’s hair, see if he could coax out more of Eliot’s exhausted smile. A fleeting moment of reprieve.“Need to secure the parameter and get water. Guess you could do with some cleaning up.”

Eliot’s lips stretched a little wider as he pushed back from Quinn’s torso with a heavy hand. He had to lean against the backrest to stay upright but still held out his hand for Quinn’s knife.

“You don’t say.”

 

When Quinn returned, Eliot hadn’t moved from the chair but his position had changed.

He had pulled his shoulders back and raised his head to open his chest, his hands resting easily in his lap - one still holding the knife. Quinn took shameless advantage of the fact that Eliot’s eyes were closed to watch him, check his deep and even breaths, the peaceful expression.

Forever the same immovable object.

No matter how bloody and bruised his face, he was beautiful. Because _he_ was beautiful, dented soul and all.

Quinn dropped the water canister by the chair and his pistol within easy reach on the old table.

Then he spread both of the sleeping bags on the ground, unpacked the bigger first aid kit and grabbed the water purification tablets.

Undressing Eliot was a quick affair. And then he sat, in a creepy reminiscence to earlier, naked to his black and blue and bloody skin, still not shivering despite the fact that the temperature hovered barely above thirty degrees.

“Hyperthermia,” he commented softly as Quinn ran the cold, wet cloth over his skin.

“I know.” Some of the cuts on Eliot’s chest and arms looked deep enough to warrant stitches but he bore everything with a stoic facade.

“Tell me if it hurts.”

“It’s fine.”

Of course, it was. Bloody rivulets were running down Eliot’s skin; his muscles flinched under Quinn’s gloved fingertips when he touched the wounds. Of course, it was fine.

But he let him have this small dignity and the touch of humor as he reached out to brush his hand over Quinn’s hair.

“I liked it better last time when I was naked and you kneeling in front of me.”

Quinn’s hand froze in a moment of perfect stillness where it hovered over the needle. Then the moment shattered with the broken snort of his laughter, his head falling forward as if that helped with hiding his face and the beautiful, indulgent stupidity of that memory. Eliot’s shower, Quinn’s back bruised because he’d tumbled down a stairway a few days earlier. He needed to stop doing that.

His fingers curled around the needle, laughter still bubbling in his chest, fingers trembling as he threaded it.

He added some topical painkiller before he started stitching him up. Pure self-indulgence; Eliot would swear he didn’t care. So Quinn did.

“Yeah, I definitely liked you better naked back then, too. But needs must.”

When he glanced up from his work, he found Eliot’s slightly out-of-focus smile directed back at him.

“You did good,” he said and brushed his hand over Quinn’s hair again. “Pretty decent grifter.”

Quinn concentrated on the ragged cut in Eliot’s pecs, the meditative resistance and pull of the needle sliding through flesh. There was no need to comment on how handsy Eliot was becoming, no need to embarrass him.

“I had help. Sophie briefed me.”

“Well, better grifter than Hardison in any case. He fucks it up even with Sophie briefing him. Overdoing it every damn time.”

This cut was the deepest, going through the upper muscle layers and it would take a while to heal, but thankfully it was short. There were others, handspans long, done with a dull knife, purely to cause damage and also just for the fun of it.

Quinn wanted to feel anger at the sight. Nothing came but the warm, mushy idiocy of relief and more relief until it bordered on dumb happiness.

“Well, he has a big personality.”

“Yeah.” Eliot’s smile drifted into smitten idiot territory then and he didn’t care enough to correct it, until his thoughts came full-circle to what he probably had wanted to say from the start. “I hate doing long cons. No patience for it.”

“You’re the most patient man I know, Eliot.”

Quinn dropped the needle and looked up as he reached for Eliot’s injured hand.

“You’re not,” Eliot said matter-of-factly. “You charge into a fight. The other has more stamina? You lose.”

His voice strained toward the end, when Quinn unraveled the tape around his swollen fingers and the open wounds where the nails should have been, but he didn’t stop talking, didn’t stop trying to pretend that everything was normal. “You did good there. Stuck with the job. Didn’t panic.”

His fingers flexed into Quinn’s careful touch and Quinn’s heartbeat jumped into his throat. It wasn’t that minded the torture so much. He’d seen worse, done worse, and survived worse.

The back of Eliot’s hand rested trustingly in his palm like an especially fragile bird. Under it, on Eliot’s thigh, sat a small round burn mark like a complementary addition to the bigger bullet scar next to it. Cigarette, Quinn’s mind supplied. Not so bad.

The pressure in his chest mounted until his heartbeat was all he heard.

“Fuck, Eliot. I’m sorry.”

He let his forehead drop the few inches to Eliot’s knee—miraculously uninjured and whole. He couldn’t have held it up if he tried, needed air and to free his throat from the things stuck there. Not the torture, but…

Eliot’s uninjured hand dropped on the back of his neck with the heaviness and surety that came with knowing who he was.

Sometimes, before this and the haircut, when he hadn’t been in the mood to play the southern gentleman, he’d liked to dig his fingers into the strands. Now, his fingernail scratched carefully over the buzz.

“No need for sorry,” he said. “Knew you had my back the whole time.”

Quinn laughed and squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head against the familiar skin, the smell of something warm, of oil and earth and the mountain water that naturally blended with it.

“That’s a bald-faced lie. You thought I betrayed you.”

Eliot’s fingers stilled against Quinn’s skin. The moment stretched until Eliot cleared his throat.

“You’re you. Won’t commit to anyone or anything. Might take a contrary contract just to prove you still can.”

Quinn listened, willing to agree and unable to do so. His free hand had found the back of Eliot’s calf and was painting idle circles on it with his thumb.

Both their breaths had calmed into silence. This was it, the moment Quinn should confirm the words.

“I don’t think I’ll have to set the fingers,” he said instead and sat up. “But if I were you, I’d see a specialist as soon as possible.”

He felt Eliot’s eyes on him. They let the silences between them stretch while Quinn worked, carefully stabilizing each finger, covering the raw wounds, bandaging the hand as a whole in the end.

He iced the dislocated shoulder and broken ribs. Eliot reluctantly poked at the MRE Quinn had forced on him.

“You need to eat. You won’t be able to.”

He didn’t protest when Quinn put him in a pair of fresh shorts and helped him into the combined sleeping bags. Only his eyes, tracking every movement, seemed to try and say something; the way they lingered on Quinn’s face and not his hands as he carefully slipped another needle into Eliot’s vein.

“Fluids. You’ll need them.”

Eliot nodded.

And then everything was done. Eliot lay huddled in the sleeping bags, patched up, fed, watered, reasonably warm, protected by walls on two sides of him and several traps outside.

Quinn sat on the floor next to his head, his gun in immediate reach, the second at his back and a knife in his ankle sheath. He wore another strapped to his right thigh, the garrote around his wrist, and then there was the backup knife on the table where Eliot had left it.

For minutes, they lay in tense silence, until Eliot said, “Gimme the gun, please.”

Quinn sized him up, half turned to his good side, with his arm curled under his head and his eyes barely peeking out from under his lashes. He held the arm with the infusion easily stretched over his body, fine tremors still running under the skin but the muscles no longer straining against the inevitable.

He didn’t like guns. Asked up front, he’d always give a grand speech about how guns had a certain effective range and more often than not proved to be a hindrance than an asset in a fight. Quinn had a different theory, one that had to do with the ease of killing that a man could do with a gun, accidentally and intentionally. And what it meant to Eliot.

He never berated Quinn for his preference and skill, never lost a word about his job. He sometimes asked how Quinn was doing. At night, over bourbon or a beer. But he never pried and never judged.

One of the reasons Quinn kept coming back. Absolutely the reason he handed over the MAC without a question.

Eliot took the gun with his eyes closed, knowing rather than seeing with his miserably working eyesight what he did. Check the safety, eject the clip, eject the bullet in the chamber. Catch it and push it back into the clip.

Like Quinn had seen him do a dozen times. Then he handed both gun and clip back to Quinn.

“You’ll be able to load it in one second.” He stretched comfortably on his back again, his free arm crossed over his face to block out the first faint grey of morning light. “I won’t.”

 _If I lose control._ He didn’t say it. There was no reason.

Quinn placed both within easy reach for himself, next to the syringe and just out of Eliot’s reach, one eye always on his friend. He saw Eliot raise the opening of the sleeping bag and peek up from under his lashes with something not quite Eliot-like. He’d seen Eliot soft before, in the morning and in safety, but not like this, so devoid of any emotional barrier in his eyes, open. A land with no borders, no intelligence, no suspicion.

“Come ‘ere?” he asked.

Sober Eliot’s paranoia would have forbidden him to let his guard down like this in a situation that might turn dangerous, no matter how unlikely. He wouldn’t have trusted security measures he hadn’t overseen himself or a plan he hadn’t followed second by second to its completion.

Sober Quinn had chosen this hut, had a map in his mind of all the nearest access points, all the players, had set up the security protecting them. He looked at Eliot and the innocent honesty in his eyes and unstrapped the more easily accessible weapons on his body. Before he slipped in behind Eliot, he dumped all of them a safe distance away and shed the parka and his dress shirt. His shoes stayed on.

He couldn’t help noticing how dry and warm Eliot’s skin felt, like the North African wind always carrying a touch of a Sahel on its wings. The cold air helped keep his temperature down but as far as the drug’s progression went, it was not a good sign.

Eliot turned without being prompted, leaning his back easily against Quinn’s chest with a little sigh, maybe of relief.

They didn’t talk, their breaths slowly synchronizing with each passing minute that Quinn’s hand rested easily over Eliot’s heart. Those unspoken words hung over them still, but now it felt more like a blanket that covered them both than a dividing curtain.

They stuck in Quinn’s throat, suffocating but not threatening. If this was the memory he’d take with him...he could live with that.

“I don’t wanna let you go.” Eliot broke the illusion of peace, mumbling words into the room and to no one in particular. He placed his bandaged hand over Quinn’s, letting the silence return, and waited.

He was good at that, breathing and not reacting, until Quinn finally extracted his hand to brush the greasy strands of Eliot’s hair back and reveal his face. The nose, broken too many times to count and only now fitting perfectly with the full, soft mouth and the bright eyes under straight brows. What could have been harsh features softened by fine lines fanning out from his eyes.

A better man would have stopped Eliot, changed the subject and told him that it was ok. A better man wouldn’t have let him talk when the drugs plowed through his inhibitions and his inborn need for privacy. A better man and a less selfish man.  

Quinn tucked the strands behind Eliot’s ear with little hope they’d stay there, and stretched his hand over Eliot’s heart again.

“You know,” he said, smiling and not sure why, “if I knew how to love...it would be you.”

Eliot’s chest expanded with a deep breath, one kick of his heart against Quinn’s palm as his lips stretched into a smile that faltered before it had fully formed.

“I need to take care of ‘em.” Eliot murmured and clumsily rearranged his head until it rested on Quinn’s arm. It sounded like an apology. “I dunno how it’ll change us. Leverage. Me. Parker. Hardison. Us. Need to fix it.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. They just want you back.” Quinn hooked his chin over Eliot’s shoulder, glancing down to catch glimpse of his face. Eliot’s eyes had long since closed, his lips caught in that soft, helpless smile he reserved for his partners.

“Gotta figure it out...yeah. Few weeks. Months.” He turned his head and blinked up at Quinn. Helpless. Soft. Smiling. “Then I’ll call you?”

He shouldn’t. Quinn knew. A better man wouldn’t. But Quinn was no better man. His lips touched Eliot’s lips carefully, a brush, sharing a breath before he pulled back. “I’ll wait for it.”

“If I figure it out…” Doubt crept into Eliot’s voice on the wings of having almost touched a solution to their conundrum, a faint drum of agitation in his heartbeat, a hitch like fear in his breath. Not Eliot. Definitely not Eliot. Just the drugs speaking.

“Shh. You got this. You practically already live in each other’s pockets. Now you live in each other’s beds.”

Eliot grunted. “What if I fuck it up?”

“Eliot…you are notoriously unable to fuck up sex. Trust me, I’m an expert.”

The thought summoned pictures, ones Quinn was intimately familiar with from long nights alone in shitty hotel rooms. Eliot’s suntanned skin slick with sweat, muscles straining as he moved. Possessive hands wrapped around wrists, soft lips and sharp teeth. Eyes clouding over and the long column of his neck as he threw his head back. That broken little moan when he came.

His soft, soundless laugh against Quinn’s chest replaced panicked breathing. “That’s not…” he slurred. “Fuck you, Quinn.”

Quinn joined in, pressing his face against his lover’s—friend’s—neck, and allowed the relief to break free, to hold on to the words and the warmth, annoying and dumb in his chest.

_I don’t wanna let you go._

Ok.

He allowed his fingers to his fingers to brush through Eliot’s hair and his lips over his jaw while they carefully laughed like men who somehow didn’t have much experience with it. They fell silent again soon because they knew too well how this world worked.

“Chances are, I won’t remember any of this, hm?” Eliot asked.

Quinn could have lied but Eliot already knew the answer, would likely lose it, along with all other short-term memories he made here, wake up tomorrow or the day after and ask himself what the hell happened and what he’d said or done. But here and now, he knew it.

“Chances are, yes.”

A strand of Eliot’s hair had escaped and fallen across his cheek. Quinn reached up and brushed it back. “You should sleep. We got a few hours till pick up.”

  


Dawn came, and with it, the restless dreams. First twitching, murmuring, then an elbow to the face that reopened the cut in Quinn’s lip and had him flee the warmth of their nest.

The sun rose even if there wasn’t much ‘sun’ to go around in autumn in the Cascades. Not enough to drive the fog from the treetops or the water out of the air. Not enough to lift the privacy sheen that wrapped the clearing while Quinn walked the parameter in slow circles, searching for a spot with a working phone connection.

He hadn’t yet found one when he heard a van approach. The difficult road gave him enough time to find a defensive position and switch the phone for his gun. He needn’t have bothered. Hardison’s black monstrosity rumbled out of the fog like a medieval battle horse.

The van had not yet stopped when the passenger door flew open and Parker tumbled out with a catlike leap. She landed on her feet.

In her suit pants and white blouse she looked like a wholly different person—FBI Agent Hagen—but then she raced across the meadow toward the door of the hut and Quinn had to speed to intercept her before she tore it open.

“Slow down there, girlfriend. You don’t wanna startle him.”

Her eyes locked onto him with the precision of a born predator, anger and despair in deep pools. Then she recognized him and the danger dissipated and left only Parker jumping into his arms.

She was just grazing her fingertips over his swollen lower lip when Hardison strolled up the final yards of the path to the hut. He walked with his big form curled inward as if he hadn’t really straightened from a computer screen for days. “It’s Eliot. We’ve been startling him for years. What’s he gonna do?”

Quinn shrugged and took a moment to examine both of them before holstering the pistol. “I don’t know. That’ll depend on whether Grumpy Bear’s drug-addled brain thinks you’re his bear friends or a bunch of North Koreans.”

Parker had stepped back into Hardison and reached for the door handle, but Quinn’s words stopped her in her tracks. She too knew too much about this world.

“Ok, tell us what we need to do.”

 

Move slowly. Speak softly. Let me step between you if necessary.

Those were the rules. Quinn would gently wake him and dress him. Let Eliot decide if he realized why Parker and Hardison were here or if he connected them to his captivity and panicked.

Eliot came awake with a gasp and a yell, a moment of disoriented panting before he managed to right his world and slot all the pieces into places he thought they belonged.

“Quinn?” he asked. Then: “Parker?” A smiling heartbeat. “Hardison.”

Quinn stepped away from the hugs that followed, let Hardison handle the task of keeping their man upright. He handed Parker the clothes and went to pack up the sleeping bags.

 

She came over a few minutes later, her face immobile as if she had forgotten to smile. A little puzzled, as if she were chewing on a mystery. Hardison was tying Eliot’s shoes.

“Your face looks good,” Parker opened. “We’ll only have to readjust a little.”

“More cuts?” Quinn zipped the duffel bag and dropped it next to the table. “Maybe break my nose?”

“No! Your nose is too pretty.” She didn’t laugh about it. Her fingers very seriously reached out and caressed the cut on his cheek, still swelling. He wouldn’t end up looking as impressively banged-up as Eliot, but it would do nicely.

“This one’s Eliot’s, right?” Now she smiled. “Hardison almost fell out of his chair it was so loud.”

And Eliot didn’t need to know that.

"Don't tell him you heard," Quinn murmured while he stuffed the sleeping bags in a pair of industry-sized trash bags and the rest on top. “Any of it.”  
Parker eyed him and then Hardison, who was settling a swaying Eliot in the back of Lucille. "I sent Hardison to get Pizza. When they...you know..." She made a face and Quinn's hand slipped.  
He wanted to say more but she’d already stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Thank you."  
The trash bag fell to the floor, casualty in the warring decisions between his job and this. Them.

"He's gonna be ok, girlfriend. Take it slow for a while, maybe, but cuddling helps. Once he sleeps off the drugs and the fever."  
Parker hid her face against his shoulder and snorted what might have been a huff of laughter. "Did you cuddle, Quinn?"

He eyed the cheeky peek of a sleeping bag where it had half fallen out of the trash bag and shrugged.  
"Yes, because I am a man secure in his sexuality and I find cuddling damn important. Also, I had to manage his temperature somehow."

Lifting her head, she blinked a few times as if to chase away unnecessary emotion. Her smile as she rubbed her knuckles over his cheek, was a little watery nonetheless.

“It’s ok, you deserve it.”

She snatched the trash bag off the ground and stuffed its contents back inside.

“Let’s go home. You can listen to Shelley. It’s funny.”

Knowing what Shelley was doing, Quinn was tempted to disagree.

Knowing to who he was doing it to though…

 


	10. In Restless Dreams I walk Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know I am exactly a week late.  
> There is a reason for that. Aside from... I hate writing endings because they're hard and need to make sense...
> 
> Some of you may already have heard that Clayne Crawford, the guy playing Quinn, got booted from his job playing Riggs in the Fox hit series Lethal Weapon. (In which he is stunningly amazing btw)  
> No reasons have been given by the Studio aside from differences between the actors but Damon Wayans, the guy that plays Murtaugh, started a little Twitter hate campaign against Clayne that basically covered everything from: People hate him, he likes to make women cry, he hit an elderly actor in the face with a bottle, he tried to shoot Damon Wayans in the head with a piece of plastic shrapnel from a stunt. And if you don't believe Damon Wayans you're basically a racist. 
> 
> If you're wondering, none of it is actually true. At best it looks like paranoid delusions, at worst it's a concerted effort to destroy Clayne Crawford and make it impossible for him to ever get a job again.  
> And he might have succeeded if not for the fans, a member of the crew that risked their job to anonymously take to Twitter and just set the record straight, a lot of friends and colleagues that have come forward and just called out the lies and... a journalist, who took two weeks of diligent research to find out what really happened. 
> 
> That article is set to come out today (hopefully... legal crap is involved), when it does, I will post it on my [tumblr](Kat2107.tumblr.com). You will also be able to find it in the Lethal Weapon and Clayne Crawford tags in tumblr and on twitter on the [journalists page ](https://twitter.com/Monica1236)  
> Defending Clayne Crawford means going up against Warner Brothers and Fox and the whole Wayans clan with all their influence and we need all the help we can get to spread the article when it drops. 
> 
> I won't ask you to trust me blindly there, but a lot has been put together by fans on twitter and if you go into the Clayne Crawford tags and #LethalTruth on Twitter, you should find a lot of info.  
> This article needs to get a lot of traction. What has happened here is that a Hollywood studio threw a man to the wolves because he's not rich or powerful and they wanted to keep the other guy with the powerful family connections and then they sat and watch a character assassination.  
> This has happened to me and nobody stood up for me. Which is why I couldn't just sit back and had to my small part to get the truth out there.  
> So, that was what I was doing instead of writing.  
> I'd be ashamed but uhm... I am not. 
> 
> I just hope you'll enjoy the chapter. Have fun!  
> Again, there is a song.  
> [ Nouella- The Sound of Silence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYICwkCnUIk)  
> It's an amazing cover and if you think that Quinn is maybe a little too far in his own head...well...
> 
> PS: Yes, the chapter count changed again, but this time it's 99% final, I swear!

He awoke. Above him, a white ceiling. One guard at the door, long legs stretched out, arms crossed and head tipped forward. Possibly asleep. The room was dark, heavy curtains keeping the light out.

No concrete walls. No water stains.

The guard shifted.

Suit and short-cropped blond hair. Powerful body. Dangerous.

“Quinn…”

The man smiled. Spoke with a soft voice, rough around the edges. “Hey there, buddy.”

Quinn.

“Parker? Hardison?”

He needed to ask. He had to…keep them safe.

“Outside,” the guard - Quinn - said. “Didn’t know how clear you’d be. If you’d know where you are or if your mind put them in captivity with you.”

“Yes,” Eliot answered. He was warm. Very warm. “Am I?” He thought on the word the guard had said. “Captive?”

“No.” Decisive. Clear. Honest. Honest killer. Not bad.

“Where am I?” The ceiling was white. Eliot exhaled, sinking deeper into the softness under him, the weight so sweetly pulling him down.

“Home.”

There was no reason to doubt it. The voice was safe. “Ok.”

 

~~~

 

When he woke next, a slender weight was curled against his side and small fingers painted lazy circles on his belly.

“I love his tummy,” she murmured. Two darker voices chuckled somewhere.

“Yeah, me too,” one of them said and Eliot couldn’t help the tug on his lips. “Like a softer side to him, the one that loves food too much.”

Hardison snorted close by. “I don’t think he believes in loving food and too much.”

“You can’t cook French without butter,” Eliot murmured, breathing in the apple scent of Parker’s shampoo where she stretched lazily against his body, her lips a cool counterpoint to his burning skin.

She and Hardison had no frame of reference for the joke. He’d have to rectify that some day. Quinn understood instantly.

“It’s ok, Julia Childs, go back to sleep.”

Butter croissants for him, maybe a brioche. More butter. Jam. Coffee with steamed milk. Quinn’s eyes softening that small touch before he closed them and chewed…

“Shuddup,” Eliot murmured. “No more croissants for you.”

 

~~~

 

The third time, he found Quinn in the same chair next to the door. With his feet crossed at the ankles, his hands linked over his belly and his head leaned against the wall behind him, he looked asleep if not for the happily sadistic smirk playing over his lips.

Darkness had replaced the murky twilight, bringing to the shadows the three-dimensionality Eliot faintly remembered missing. Right until his field of vision hit its fuzzy edges and every color ran together into a pale collage until it all turned grey.

“Time’s it?” The idea of space brought on an image of a fourth dimension. Important.

A needle was stuck in Eliot’s arm and from there a cannula ran up to an IV bag. He was tempted to name it something unflattering. Like Quinn the motherhen.

The motherhen across the room looked up his smirk shifting into a true smile. “Ten p.m.” He got up and crossed the carpet. “You’ve been out for fifteen hours.”

Fifteen hours.

Quinn’s hand brushed coolly over Eliot’s forehead, face and shoulders. Eliot had a vague memory of him doing that before, an intimate touch lacking the awkwardness of unclear permission.

“Stop fussing,” he grouched and Quinn’s smile grew.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll remove the needle myself.” Eliot lifted his bandaged hand to discern the impossibility of the task for himself. He would. Not with these fingers, but he still had teeth. He’d done it before more than once. It didn’t matter whether he was caught in that awkward place between “unsure if he could get up” and “able to fight if pressed”.

He might…have to.

Not sure if he could. He glanced to the door past Quinn and swallowed his pride. “Bathroom.”

That at least prompted Quinn to remove the needle and the almost empty IV drip while supplying all the information Eliot wanted to ask for, unprompted.

“Parker and Hardison are outside, directing Shelley. He’s closing in.”

So that had brought out Quinn’s sadistic streak.

“Say hi from me,” he murmured as Quinn pulled him onto his feet and immediately caught his arms around Eliot’s middle to keep him there.

The pub’s guestroom was anything but large but the five steps to the bathroom door might as well have been the Grand Canyon, except for Quinn’s solid presence at his side.

He managed to get inside without Quinn’s help, taking care of business with nonagenarian dexterity and reflexes.

He could fight if pressed but his body saw no need to waste any resources on anything outside a life or death situations.

Not a life or death situation. Not for him.

“Eliot says hi,” he heard Quinn’s voice right outside the door. Fucking motherhen. Good laugh. “Give ‘im hell from both of us, ok?”

Quinn said something to Parker followed by an evil cackle that Eliot knew she’d mirror.

He reached out, fingers touching the wood, and closed his eyes. He still had time.

Time to sort his memories.

 

~~~

 

The foot of Mt. Hood was taken up by a dozen small tourist traps, hamlets that consisted of nothing but diners, gift shops, outdoor suppliers and whatever else a traveller might need along the road up or on their way down, awash with fresh memories of the majestic peak and the deep woods that lined its slopes.

In summer these pockets of civilization would be crawling with hikers and families. In winter, skiers would overtake their idyllic, snow-covered-postcard existence.

Shelley leaned against the cratered bark of a douglas fir and watched the lone diner sitting below them, last outpost of the glorious ‘town’ called Government Camp.

Across from him, Donne’s scowl deepened with each minute he had to listen to their people bicker while he silently chewed on a chemically flavored piece of energy bar.

“Man, I miss Eliot. His burgers are just the best.”

“Excuse me! Who here trained with the maestro himself and is trying to keep this diner running?”

“Running? We had like three customers yesterday. Poor mom and pop will come back from meeting their new grandchild and be so disappointed in you, Dylan.”

“Oh fuck off, Browning. My burgers are good. You ate two of them for lunch.”

Sending the owners off to a few days of vacation in Seattle had been a stroke of evil genius leaving Browning and Dylan in charge

They didn’t always get together like this, being pulled on assignment as needed. The last time had been the job that almost cost them their youngest. After that, Shelley had put his foot down and enforced some R&R for his whole team, giving them time to get rid of the sound of blood bubbling on Dylan’s lips, Browning’s fingers reaching into his body.

The kid had pulled through, undisturbed by his near-death experience, excited to get back to work.

Especially if it meant helping Eliot. Things that never did fly with Shelley’s men: attacking one of their own, no matter how long he’d been out of the game.

You could quit the army, you could quit the job, you couldn’t quit them. And Eliot… Well, Eliot.

“Children, behave,” Donne finally murmured. “You’re not there to make mom and pop rich, you’re guarding a payphone.”

“How much longer?” Browning asked, the sound of her heavy medic bag slamming on a table in the background so distinctive by now that Shelley involuntarily flinched. Memories, yes, but also her temper.

“Not long. He’s closing in. We’re letting him go in a straight line now.”

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep…” Frosty snickered.

Donne grinned and shook his head. “If we go another round with him, he’ll break down crying and refuse to move again.”

Reimann had come close already earlier when Donne and Shelley had herded him away from the road, close to invisible in the dense foliage yet deliberately audible in breaking twigs and the rustle of leaves.

Frosty’s yell at the bottom of the hillside he’d deemed his safe route had spooked him into losing his balance, or he’d plain lost it after an exhausting twelve-hour hunt, driven in circles by a pack of pissed off killers. The light had been waning and Reiman had misjudged a step, tumbled down a small cliff into the shallow ravine below.

They’d found him—safely watching from a distance—curled around his phone in a desperate attempt to get it to work. Quinn, on the other side of the coms, had opened a betting pool when he’d start to cry. Hardison had only too readily accepted and offered to play the Silent Hill theme whenever Reimann attempted another call, but Parker had nixed the idea.

Not entirely. Only for the moment. They needed to buy time, not break him. Yet.

As Shelley watched him limp along a barely visible path through the forest, inching closer to the lone diner with every nervous glance over his shoulder, he smiled.

“You know what, boys?” he said and pushing away from his tree with a glance at his watch. “I think time’s up.”

 

Half an hour later Reimann had finally made it through the backdoor and to the phone.

As a professional, Shelley could do nothing but admire the impeccable job Eliot’s team had done with the setup.

Like the rest of the diner, the back hallway had long since taken on the dulled veneer of all things well-loved: one or two tiles cracked, the phone at least two decades out of fashion. Still, it was more hallmark than Hitchcock. Clean, bright, someone had left a dish with a few coins outside the bathrooms unguarded—just in case Reimann traveled without cash.

It screamed harmless and safe and Reimann took the bait without second thought. He didn’t even bother to barricade the door to the dining room before he yanked the receiver off the phone.

Shelley took a last bite of the burger and threw it back on the plate, his appetite chased away by the slow drumming current of adrenaline.

He'd eat that later. After.

Dylan, on the other side of the kitchen, sharpened his knives.

With one last deep breath, Shelley let the rush of excitement wash over him and slid off the table.

He heard Reimann yell through the door, his voice rising through the registers, pitching higher and higher.

“He’s dead, for fuck’s sake! Either that or he bolted. Yes! Yes, I got the information! It’s in a warehouse in Washington.” He barely managed to rattle down the address before he slammed the receiver onto the old phone with a yell and that was their sign.

He shoved the door open with a crash loud enough that Reimann down the corridor dropped the receiver and swirled around.

“Hello, Benjamin.” Shelley smiled in the face of that much fear and Donne who appeared through the busted back door.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I?” Shelley smiled until it tipped into cruelty. So many great ways to answer this. Some even honest. Most just not...terrifying enough. “My name is Ozymandias…”

Reimann backed away.

“...king of kings.”

Donne let him get almost to the doorway before his bear-paw hands grabbed Reimann’s arms.

“Looks at my works ye mighty…” Shelley didn’t bother finishing. “Oh, fuck this. Eliot says hi.”

He smashed his fist into Reimann’s face.

 

~~~

 

Light tickled his face like the soft voices in the background and the clacking of a keyboard close by. He recognized the engine hum of one of the private jets Hardison liked to steal, usually as a background for a con and not to fly in.

The light vanished as a soft, warm hand curled over Eliot’s temple to shield his eyes. The clacking stopped.

He smelled of sugar and the faint ozone touch of electronics, the rancid oil smell of stale McDonald’s fries.

God knew these two would die of scurvy if he didn’t feed them.

The long, elegant fingers that never stilled rested gently against Eliot’s temple for all of thirty seconds before they began to caress his skin, his forehead, skirting around the injuries like a skittish animal.

Somewhere in the background, Parker chattered about a safe she’d broken into. Quinn laughed.

Eliot drew a careful breath, delaying the inevitable jolt of waking into a languid rise to the surface. That he could, said more about his physical state than the thrumming pain in his hand or the grating fire in his ribs.

Not quite there yet.

He turned his head into the fingers on his face and allowed a small smile to form.

“Am I hallucinating or is that a smile?”

Eliot schooled his face.

“Ah no, there’s McGrumpy. You had me worried there for a second.”

He found Hardison staring down at him, fingers resting against his cheek and the soft, dark eyes shifting over his features with a pinched look.

Eliot sighed. “I’m fine, Hardison.”

Hardison shook his head but turned back to his notebook, only his hand pulled the blanket higher over Eliot’s shoulder. It took that to register that Eliot was no longer cooking in his own skin. The sunlight still felt like a stab straight through his optic nerve.

The big, soft hand curled under his head and lifted it enough to rest on Hardison’s thigh, in the shade of the laptop.

“Y’ok like this?” His fingers already resumed their gentle wandering but before Eliot could get another reinsurance in about the state of his health, Hardison cut him off, his voice a tad sharper, more real than usual. “Don’t say it. ‘Not the first time’ is not proper reasoning that torture isn’t that bad. Nothing is.”

In the background, Parker’s voice fell silent.

Eliot rolled onto his back and curled his working fingers around Hardison’s hand, holding him in place without any strength. There’d been that thing with the CIA that time Hardison had been in danger, but Hardison needn’t know that. Clearing his throat, Eliot placed the hand in his own over his heart, tugging when Hardison tried to look away.

“I will be fine,” he said, southern accent thick on the last remnants of the drugs. “I know how to deal. I got support if I need it.”

“But you don’t. Won’t take it.” Hardison’s voice cracked a little in the middle before he cleared his throat and averted his eyes, back to the safety of his computer screen.

They both heard the pair of steps come closer—one heavy with confidence, the other light as a cat’s. Neither of them looked up.

Hardison’s heart could be a fragile thing, packed in so many layers of smoke and mirrors of stories of a cool kid. Maybe he was that kid in his games and online but not here. Here his shell had cracked and unlike Eliot’s, whose shell had cracked so many times and on so many levels that it had hardened into a thick, scarred armor, Hardison’s was smooth and a little shiny and the fissure went all the way through.

“Hey, Alec!” He reached up, ignored the movement out of the corner of his eyes and wrapped his good hand around Hardison’s neck, too weak to pull him down but Hardison bent forward a little nonetheless. His huge body, so athletic until he tried something athletic, effectively caged Eliot in. It was impossible to miss the short bursts of his breath and his pulse jumping in his throat. His eyes kept shifting away from Eliot’s face only to be drawn back by force of will every time.

Eliot slowly rubbed his thumb along the side of Hardison’s neck. Three seconds in. Three seconds out.

“Why is my head lying on your thigh, Hardison?”

“Why is…?” Hardison blinked. “I don’t know, man. Because you got drugged and…and tortured and were in a coma for almost twenty hours and are lying on this effing expensive leather couch and I bet you don’t even remember how you got here? I don’t know, man.” From this close, Eliot saw his irises redden and the rapid blinking, his stupidly long lashes like the wings of a hummingbird.

“I don’t know anymore, man,” he added once more, soft and a little broken, yes still shifting and blinking, checking on the other two.

Quinn saved him. “Because he trusts you. That way? He can’t see your hands or anything behind him.”

He stood with Parker by his side at the foot of the couch, standing maybe a little stiff from soreness but nobody who didn’t know him closely would notice. Anybody else would be distracted by the spectacular bruises ringing his eye and mottling his neck.

He was as good an excuse as any to look away from Hardison’s raw eyes and give him a chance to pull his facade back together.

“Happened to you?”

Quinn pointed to his left where Parker wriggled her fingers free from the sleeves of Eliot’s hoodie and showed her makeup-tinted fingertips.

“Make him pretty for Marx.” She smiled, but her keen eyes followed his hand where it fell from Hardison’s neck. Eliot knew she noticed the split second it took him to make it look intentional.

“Sexy,” Eliot snorted.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Quinn said and folded his big body into the two-seater on the other side of the couch. “Sexy. And blue is definitely my color.”

Parker laughed as she crawled onto the couch and under Eliot’s legs, not asking permission for anything. She just assumed a place that was hers by virtue of her making it so. Like the kiss, she’d stolen with the cracker. Like his heart.

When Eliot looked up, he found Hardison still looking at him, his hand a warm and heavy weight around Eliot’s jaw.

“Ok?” he asked and Eliot nodded, shifted a little to make the position more comfortable.

“Yeah, man, it’s fine.”

Warm. Safely bracketed by people he…

His gaze found Quinn’s and his wistful smile.

Parker’s hands slowly petted over Eliot’s legs and she, too, watched Quinn.

The smile got covered by sudden rush of boyish charm and a wink for her. She giggled, even as she pinched Eliot’s leg. Because Parker.

Something that had been tightly curled in Eliot’s chest unraveled watching them and looking up to find Hardison shaking his head in mock annoyance.

“Can we go over the plan again? I mean, it’s pretty simple  _if_ we can keep our boy over there from getting into trouble,” he said.

Quinn’s grin grew as if he were out to challenge the world and intended to win.

“I excel at trouble.”

“Not this time. You stay safe.”

They all looked at Eliot.

Quinn cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.

_If I knew how to love…_

Eliot snorted. “Just stay safe, alright?”

 

~~~

 

Where Oregon drowned in fog, the east coast froze in icy wind. Quinn raised his face to the sky and smiled.

At least they had sun.

It didn’t quite appease the mass of emotions churning in his stomach but it smoothed the surface ripples. Hardison had sent him to an empty office somewhere in the back of the building and Parker had ordered Quinn to sleep. Quinn had slept in worse places and much less safe than with someone’s eyes on the camera and a voice in his ear warning him.

But he’d also had less to worry about then.

They had gotten distracted quickly by their own planning in a safe hotel room downtown, only Sophie checking in on him and the role he was supposed to play. She had no frame of reference for the click-clack of cleaning guns. Sophie Devereaux didn’t care how many times he checked the sightlines from the window to see the place where Marx’s plane would land.

She didn’t think in murder.

But she also never missed a cue. “We need to know where he keeps the information on Leverage. Or they’ll always be vulnerable.”

He’d watched Parker and Hardison huddle around Eliot on the plane, no matter how much physical distance lay between them. But the hollow feeling in his chest never got far.

Whenever he’d tried to imagine the closeness, the casual intimacy for himself and found something amiss, someone either had looked up (Eliot) or sat on him (Parker) or happily told him that they had found him a nice little office to nap in (Hardison). By the time their plane finally landed, Quinn had relished at the chance to get out of their vicinity and back into his own head, his own reality. To his fingers sliding over his guns and the smell of oil and cordite on his skin.

… or they would always be vulnerable.

Maybe he could’ve walked away on the pier in Astoria.

Sitting in an empty office on the outskirts of Washington, his fingers shifting over gun parts, taking them apart and putting them back together, he sighed.

“I know, Sophie. I just like to daydream.”

 

Now, three hours later and not one of them spent sleeping, Quinn watched Marx’s plane being towed to the hangar and pressed his right arm tighter to his side, feeling his MAC against his ribs.

Tomorrow, he’d be gone. Travel wherever. Europe most likely.

Until then though…

He straightened and stared up the gangway in time to see Thomas Marx recoil.

One shot and it’d be done. The body would tumble down the stairs and hit the dirty concrete at Quinn’s feet before any of Marx’s bodyguards had any chance to stop him.

“Julien…” Marx limped down the gangway, a smile on his face that barely covered the lines on his forehead and bracketing his mouth. “I’d be lying if I said I expected you.”

“Reimann sold us out to Spencer’s people. The warehouse is a trap.”

Marx’s eyes snapped to Quinn’s face and the colorful bruises Parker had retouched with painstaking care, then dropped to where others vanished into Quinn’s dress shirt and finally to his gloved hands.

“I see. And what are you doing here?”

Quinn clenched his jaw. “My job.”

“Which you can prove of course.”

Quinn wordlessly threw him Hardison’s burner phone. A robust little thing, cheap, untraceable, and it carried exactly one number. On the other side of that number sat Hardison and every sound bite Shelley had gotten them from Reimann.

Marx caught it with a quick snap of his hand and checked it over. He smiled. An uncomfortable echo of who he truly was. His eyes unfocused and distant, as if he could see whoever was on the other side of that phone and find them suffering.

When he looked up, the smile had settled back into the comfortable politeness of a successful businessman. “And my friend Eliot?”

Quinn had to swallow down the bitter taste in his mouth. “Reimann accidentally overdosed him,” he forced past his teeth. “Then he panicked. Next time, tell me about the nerve gas.”

Marx laughed.

“Let me guess, the little idiot tried to blame it on you? How’d that work out for him.”

Good humor crinkled the corners of his eyes, no word of Eliot’s death. The artificial white of his teeth gleamed in the cold sunlight and Quinn had to turn away before he gave in to the impulse and hit him.

“Well, I’m here and he is not.”

“True.” Marx marched forward through the hangar towards the armored SUV parked on the other side, raising Hardison’s phone to his ear.

Quinn didn’t need to hear what they said; he’d listened to Hardison put it together.

He followed quietly, hands easily shoved into his pockets, eyeing the bodyguards that fanned around them. Nothing too specific, just an easy threat assessment while they walked.

By the time they reached the car, Marx threw the phone over his shoulder for Quinn to catch.

“Have him killed.”

He shifted into the backseat of the SUV and waved for Quinn to follow.

“Consider it done.”

The inside of the SUV resembled more a high-class limousine: leather seats, mahogany details and, of course, a bar and fridge. From which Marx promptly grabbed a small bottle of orange juice as soon as the car began to move. He didn’t offer anything.

“You seem worried.” Marx finished the bottle in a few quick draughts and tossed it into the trash with a practiced flick of his wrist, barely glancing in the direction. A casual reminder that he was not just a common criminal in a suit.

Turning back, Quinn let his gaze shift over Marx’s bad knee, finding what looked like the shape of a throwing knife meshed into the slim brace he wore for stabilization.

None of them actually knew how disabled the man was. None of them knew what he was capable of. When it came down to a fight man to man, the one left standing would always be the one with the most to lose. It made you fight harder, more desperately. And incidentally, the ones with the most to lose were always those that valued their own lives above all else.

Marx seemed not at all worried, one arm spread easily along the back of his seat to angle his body toward Quinn as his eyes took him in with just a hint of a smile.

“So…”

“So the warehouse is a death trap. They’re waiting for us. They’ll want revenge.”

“Ah…” Marx rolled his head against the back of his seat in a smooth motion and with a grating chuckle. “But see, Julien...they don’t know he’s dead, do they?”

“No, I got Reimann before that.”

Marx nodded, eyes seeing right through Quinn for a moment.

“So, they’ll still want him back. Let’s say…we give them what they want. His location in exchange for my possessions…that should be fair to all involved.” His lips twitched. “Hope is a terrible adviser, isn’t it?

There is also the little part of the files I have on them. Would be a shame if those fell into the hands of the police.” He paused. “Or Interpol.”

Warmth soothed the sudden thump of Quinn’s heart in his chest when a puzzle piece clicked into place. He had expected to have to poke and prod to get even a fraction of what he needed and now that Marx offered it freely his nerves just fizzled out.

No idea how Eliot did this regularly, maybe it got better with time, but Quinn much preferred just beating people.

“Mr. Marx…” He had to run a hand over his face to force his thoughts back to his script with the scratch of the rough leather. “This crew, even without Spencer…They don’t have their reputation for nothing. What in hell could be worth risking a face to face meeting? It would be a miracle if we get out of there alive. We should go to ground and return for the box when this blows over.”

Marx shook his head. “Sadly, time is of the essence. We have a window of opportunity that is steadily closing.”

He leaned forward, clasping his hands on his knees, close enough that Quinn thought about leaning back from the intensity of the gaze Marx leveled on him.

“The information in that chest will keep us safe from everyone. Leverage? Your little Ukrainian problem? You will be untouchable.” He bowed his head but his eyes held Quinn’s. Benevolence dripped from every razor-sharp word. “If you’re scared of course, I’d understand. Disappointing, but moving at this level is not for everyone. Though I had hoped we could find common ground for a long-term working relationship. Power. Money. Men will fear you, women will covet you. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Quinn almost said ‘No. I’m gay.’ Just to see how much it’d throw Marx.

He didn’t of course. Wasn’t even sure if he still could and it didn’t matter. Guys like Marx didn’t pay him to seduce people and he had yet to kill someone with his dick.

In his mind, Sophie laughed at his own dumb commentary. ‘It is all about seduction. Seduce them to want what you are offering them: sex, power, loyalty, recognition of their genius.’

It’d been a while since he had done that for anything other than what both parties wanted, but like any good party trick it never quite went away.

Quinn rubbed the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, slow and thoughtful, and looked away, back out the window, as if he was searching for something just out of reach.

“Let’s say, I am intrigued,” he said and looked back at Marx, finding the dark brown eyes and the predatory intelligence within. “How would it get us all that? Right now, it sounds too good to be true.” Behind his breastbone a small electric current started, ran up his spine and he let it bloom into a shadow of a smile, a promise of what he had to offer. “And if you wanna use me to my full potential, sir? We’ll need to be on the same page.”

Marx’s eyes darkened, even as the skin around them tightened with humor. For a moment, the interior of the SUV seemed to shrink, bringing them closer together, while Marx grappled with whatever decision he had to make.

Finally, he leaned back. “Why do you think I joined the army, Julien?”

“Regular paychecks?”

Marx laughed. “Opportunity. War means profit. Sic vis pecuniam para bellum.”

He spread his hands like a despot facing the adoring masses and grinned heartily.

“It’s just a matter of getting into position early enough and knowing where the profit lies. Antiquities, weapons, you name it. And of course… information.”

“Information...”

Marx’s smile took on an extra edge.

“Remember, Julien, there are no friends in this world, merely rivals or assets. But there are plenty who want a share of the cake, even if they don’t know how to get hold of the knife. Believe me when I say, they were all too happy to buy it, and non too careful about not leaving a trail of blood on the blade. Officers, politicians, businessmen…opportunity.”

Quinn thought of Eliot, the hatred in Shelley’s voice. Of the scratchy blanket in Eliot’s closet in Portland that reminded him of the barracks and of people Quinn had actually called comrades once. It gave him just enough sense of safety that he could sleep when his body was wound up and his sense of danger was screaming at him to avoid all vulnerability.

He tried to find an ounce of pity for the man in front of him but nothing came: hollow, barren, less empathy than for a mark. Good.

“And the crate?”

“The crate…” Marx’s face twisted for a moment. “Rookie mistake. I forgot that not all believe in coexistence, in share and rule. I got most of it out of the country before Moreau came for me. But I had to close out one last deal…and then my idiot messenger got himself caught and lynched.” His low scoff held a softer tone, a memory of someone he had maybe liked. “But at least he had enough brains to drop the information off  _somewhere_ , even if it was with Eliot Spencer of all people.”

His hands uncurled on his knees, softly patting the one that would never work right again.

Quinn followed the movement. That part was easy. “Moreau got you before you could get it... And now he’s vanished. Dead?”

“Oh no, Moreau is not dead. He sits in a cell on a piece of rock in the Mediterranean. Not unlike Napoleon. Except Napoleon had a minimum of comfort.” Marx leaned back again, stretched his arms along the back of his seat, his fingers caressing idle circles over the leather. “Moreau, last I heard, gets to shower once a week.” His fingers stilled and his shoulders relaxed along the tightness in his smile at the thought. “Out here he left a big vacuum.”

“You intend to fill it.”

Marx tipped an imaginary hat.

“All these corrupt officers, businessmen and politicians that so willingly did business with me have had ten years to build their careers. Senators, Congressmen, CEOs, advisers…

“Do you know how terrorism is financed, Julien? By selling natural resources. And do you know what one of the most valuable natural resource is in Iraq? Antiquities.

“Who do you think are the middlemen on the ground that flood the market with all those delicious cylinder seals, pottery, clay tablet and beautiful friezes? The men with the guns. Tribal leaders, Jama’at, Al-Quaeda, whatever their name of the day.”

He laughed meanly.

“But the military and politicians were literally too dumb to understand that. And by the time they wizened up? It was too late. Shame if the American public came to know who of their trusted leaders financed the death of America’s sons because they wanted a winged bull in their office. Who signed off on gun deliveries that landed with insurgents.”

Marx’s fingers drummed on the leather like a circus maestro introducing their last and final, their most stunning act and presentation.

“Such promising careers destroyed by such a small detail like a business ledger and a tally.”

Outside the tinted car windows, buildings rushed by. The outskirts of Washington.

“Blackmail,” Quinn grinned, rewarded with a mirroring grin from Marx.

“So much safer than bribery…”

“If we get the chest,” Quinn amended. “And to get the chest we will have to go in there and exchange Spencer.”

From there it would be nothing but a normal operation: cover up a hit, shift the blame, don’t get caught. “I took out most of Reimann’s men, the rest fled, but with a little preparation we will just hand Leverage the truth: Reimann killed Eliot Spencer.”

“Their own inside man...Julien, that is vile.”

Quinn smiled and stretched. “Yes, it is.”

“What about the information on them? Can we send someone to pick it up and get it here on time?”

“Julien…” Marx shook his head like a benevolent, only slightly disappointed father. “Do you really think I’d leave something like this somewhere out of reach during an operation?”

Quinn’s heart started to pound. He had to actually look down to hide his smile and almost missed the subtle shift of Marx’s hand to the breast pocket. Like the hobbit reassuring himself the ring was still there.

“Apologies. But if you’d worked with the people—nevermind.”

Marx’s smile deepened and he reached into the bar to retrieve a bottle of cold beer, handing it to Quinn in a smooth move. Unopened. “Accepted. I appreciate your attention to detail, Julien.”

The cap popped softly as Quinn opened it, smirking around the first swig.

He placed the beer bottle between his knees after the first taste, both to prove to his employer that he put the job first and to not drink too much too soon. In its place, he pulled his MAC and checked both magazine and chamber with a grim smile at Marx.

Outside the window, the low-income suburbs changed into low-lying warehouses.

“How many men do we have?”

Quinn didn’t intend to divert them. The attempt alone might alert Marx. But he needed to know what he’d been dealing with as they drew closer to warehouse number 16.

  
  
  



	11. The Moment of Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are late again. I know.  
> I am almost innocent this time. Life happened and for a change not even my life! Yay.  
> All my wonderful betas had things happening and I wanted to wait for the right person's opinion.  
> I mean, you gotta take my word on it, but it was so worth the wait!  
> Somwhere exist two files:  
> Number one is an excel that basically keeps track of what everybody is doing at any point in time and space.  
> The second keeps track of who knows what and what they think they know and how and when they acquire that information.  
> I should burn both because they're agents of chaos ^^
> 
> I can only hope that the things I made out of these files make sense.  
> After this chapter, we'll know.
> 
> In other news: Chapter 12 is written already. It still needs edits, so many edits, but we're almost there.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> Extra warning: Mention of slight blood play.

“He’s a natural.”

Eliot looked up, faint alarm bells ringing in his mind at Sophie’s admiring tone.

“He’s following Marx’s moods perfectly,” she said and smiled in that soft, almost oblivious way that she sometimes reserved for people she liked. Her finger lingered against her ear as if she could reach out to her latest pupil in the fine arts of grifting. “I wonder how he does it with that much empathy and his normal…”

Only then did she seem to remember Eliot and his former “job”, her eyes shifting to him and ducking away into a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Quinn’s good at compartmentalizing,” Eliot offered and looked back down to the security feed that showed the seemingly empty warehouse and its surroundings.

To see the others, he had to physically check outside the door of the office. Parker stood in a loose group with Nate and Vance a little to the side of Hardison’s camping table, deep in discussion. Their hacker ignored them for the most part, engrossed in his laptop. He only threw in a casual comment here and there as necessary. It usually wasn’t, but that never stopped Hardison’s motormouth.

They all listened in on Quinn and how he snuck his way into Marx’s trust, their mics muted to avoid distracting him.

Sophie was right though, Quinn was good. He didn’t grift like Eliot by making himself smaller. He already did that in his daily life. No. It seemed Quinn, when grifting, finally allowed himself to be who he was: scarily competent, sometimes suave, and filling out his suits for once. He was good at playing evil.

Outside, Parker lifted her head and smiled at Eliot with eerie precision. Like she knew he’d been looking and knew about that knot low in his chest. She smiled as if she knew his history with warehouses and what came with it.

The warehouse was a warehouse: boxes, crates, a few palettes of things Eliot didn’t care about that customs had carted off until they found a way to get rid of them or use them.

It looked like the last one he’d walked into in Washington. The one he’d walked out of alone, with broken bodies and fire behind him, and before him a man who accepted him for who he was and what he did.

Or another warehouse before that, somewhere in Albania in a cold winter. That time, he’d been walking away and his sole company had been the statue of a stolen deity, a headless masterpiece dragged from its homeland in the sand.

Moreau had already cashed in on it. Eliot’s efforts to return it wouldn’t harm him, but he would receive Eliot’s signal loud and clear: I am not yours anymore.

When Eliot didn’t respond to her attempts at small talk, Sophie left silently to join Vance outside, freeing Nate to come and get on Eliot’s nerves, like a well-coordinated dance.

“I’m fit. Don’t worry, Nate,” Eliot cut him off before he had a chance to open his mouth.

It earned him a clipped nod and a self-deprecating smile.

“That’s good to know, but not what I was about to ask.” Nate pointed to the uppermost desk drawer. The one where Eliot had hidden his dirty secret like an alcoholic his bottle. Figured that Nate of all people would find out. “I remember the last time you used one of those,” he said. “I’d rather you not.”

Eliot wondered who else knew. Or knew enough to draw conclusions. He decided none of them. Parker might but Parker didn’t care, not like Nate did. Hardison would definitely care but his high powered brain didn’t notice small details like Eliot bringing a gun to… a possible gun fight.

“I don't plan to.”

Nate nodded and softly closed the door. The flimsy plywood and glass door. The one that Elliot could force open with one well-aimed punch. The unlocked flimsy glass door. Absolutely no reason for Eliot’s heartbeat to pick up or his breath to stutter.

His friend took one look and opened the door again, enough for the chatter of the others to filter in and for Eliot’s brain to register ‘open’. Then he shifted on his heel and walked away from the door into a tight circle around the room that was too small for his personality.

“I just wondered why you brought it at all.”

He followed the shift of Eliot’s eyes to the door and beyond to Sophie, Hardison and Vance. Parker had vanished silently into the rafters. They all wore their earbuds, like Shelley and his men outside. They all listened to Quinn. Hardison had muted all of them but Eliot didn’t trust his inborn curiosity enough to tempt him.

He pulled his earbud out.

The silence dragged on with Eliot unable to form the words even if he had wanted to say them. He didn’t need to. Nate always was happy enough to answer his own questions.

“I didn’t know you even had a gun.”

“It’s one of Quinn’s.”

He had asked Quinn for one of his backup weapons on the plane when Parker and Hardison had been distracted, and Quinn had handed it to him without hesitation. Eliot could’ve left it at the hotel. He hadn’t. He’d put it in the drawer as soon as they had arrived, fully loaded and waiting to be used.

“Ah yes...Quinn’s.” Nate nodded with pursed lips, shifting closer to the desk. “Still doesn’t answer why, though.”

“What do you wanna hear from me? I don’t know, ok? I had a feeling that I might need it.”

Nate looked him over, then outside to his wife on the other side of the glass. To Hardison who whooped at that precise moment. “They’ll be safe in here with you,” he murmured.

“Of course they will.”

Nate smiled and shrugged as though he expected nothing less, then he pointed through the dirty glass and into the warehouse.

They couldn’t see the cargo entrance from here, neat stacks of goods hiding the office from the central aisle. On their side, there was only a small door leading outside opposite the office entrance. If push came to shove, they had a huge box in place to block it. Inside the office, a table under the window ensured their exit.

Nate followed Eliot’s gaze with a non-committal hum, caught in his own thoughts about the setup. “Me and Vance will be within your reach all the time.” He pointed to a spot that Eliot had chosen for them. “Parker will be in the rafters, out of sight.”

Eliot had gone over it a dozen times in the last hour since their arrival. He had gone over the plans with Parker beforehand at the hotel. He didn’t need a revision. His own mind did an impeccable job of running through every position and angle at any given moment.

Nate didn’t care, of course. He wasn’t talking about security.

“See, at first I thought it was because of the change with you, Parker and Hardison. God knows I’ve had an adjustment period with Sophie.”

“Nate…” Eliot ran a hand over his face and sighed. “The team’s first three years were your adjustment period with Sophie. I am not taking relationship advice from _you_.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to.” Nate looked over his shoulder, smiling. “I just find myself thinking… with all of us accounted for, you know, only one person you care about will be standing on the opposite end of the warehouse. His back to an unguarded door. Impossible for you to reach, no matter how fast you are.”

Eliot pushed back his chair with enough force for it to slam into the table under the window. The impact reverberated through his body and shook loose more of that nervous energy he already had too much of. With nowhere for it to go, Eliot shoved his hand through his hair, catching a few strands in his fingernails. Pain sparked. He needed to cut it.

That thought led straight to another: Quinn’s curls and how they spilled over Eliot’s fingers when he dug his hands in. Quinn’s stupidly proud grin. Quinn without his curls now.

Across from him, Nate raised an eyebrow.

“It’s complicated,” Eliot grumbled. When he opened his mouth to explain he found he still lacked the words to name it. “This thing with you and Sophie,” he started over, “you knew her before. When you were still married. And nothing happened, right?”

Maggie and him - and Sophie - wouldn’t be on such good speaking terms if it had.

Nate shook his head. “That’s different.” He looked up to the ceiling. “Was different. I was a different man back then.”

He made a face and Eliot thought of all the things that Nathan Ford had had. A son, successful career, legal life, a functioning liver.

“And now?” he dared ask and found his answer in the shake of Nate’s head.

“Not for me. But that's not the point,” Nate said and walked around the desk to perch on the table’s corner.

Eliot pulled the gun from the drawer and weighed it in his hand. It felt so foreign yet so familiar to him. An invitation, a warning to tread carefully. A whisper to do things he knew he shouldn’t. He threw it back in and crossed his arms, closing the drawer with his knee. “Then what is?”

Nate clasped his hands on his thigh, eying Eliot from his elevated position with no hint of superiority or smugness. “The point is, what do _you_ want?”

_Parker sitting on his lap, her slender arms wrapped around his shoulders, looking at him with that slightly unhinged secretive little smile. “My Eliot.”_

_Hardison’s big, soft hands in Eliot’s hair, caressing him to sleep while he took apart Thomas Marx’s business with single-minded vindictiveness, murmuring gentle words whenever he thought nobody could hear._

_Quinn’s heavy body curled around Eliot’s, his hand over Eliot’s heart. “If I knew how to love…”_

He didn’t remember a lot of the time between their arrival at the hut and waking up in the pub’s guestroom. He had saved a few deliberate pieces, had scrawled them in almost intelligible letters on a piece of paper before the memories could fade along with the effects of Agent 15. He refused to forget those, easier or not.

Nate watched him with the intensity of a hawk.

With him, it wasn’t always easy to know whether he waited to protect or to attack. Or both. But they’d known each other long enough to understand how the other worked, the basic setups of trust, guilt and honor - or lack thereof - that fueled the decisions they made.

“I…” Eliot exhaled slowly, breathing through the warmth of the little flame in his chest. The brilliant moment before someone threw the first punch or, as Parker would say, the moment when you jumped, before you knew whether the ropes would hold. “I wanna keep them.”

Nate understood what Eliot didn’t say, the minute hesitation in his words.

“Let me ask you something, Eliot,” Nate opened, fanning out his hands, a conductor preparing for the opening beats. “When you run a con, what is the most important thing?”

Eliot frowned, wading through several possibilities in his mind only to throw them out one after another. “It needs to actually work? Which is a goddamn miracle in itself sometimes.”

Nate actually had the audacity to laugh. “It is. Or… maybe not. You know, maybe the reason I made Parker the mastermind is not that she is able to dissect a situation into all its moving parts, correctly analyzing each of them…”

Eliot wanted to punch him. Just a little. Just to wipe the dramatic exaggeration off his face.  

“She doesn’t forget what she was saying from talking so much bullshit?”

“Ah...” Nate weighed his head and smirked, not in the least touched by the insult. “Parker never loses sight of her endgoal. It doesn’t matter how complicated it gets, how much things go south… you can’t turn her away from what she wants. And if you want something enough you make it happen.”

Eliot stared at him in silence for all of two seconds before Nate hopped off the table. He rubbed his hands with fake glee and pointed to the door.

“They’re ten minutes out. We should get on it.”

When he turned his head and marched to the door, Eliot caught a nanosecond glimpse of the earbud Nate hadn’t bothered to remove. Hardison was watching them with sharp eyes and an encouraging smile.

The world came rushing back the moment Nate tore open the door and with it the reminder that Eliot had a job to do. Faking for a little longer was tempting but he’d made it a point after Moreau to not lie to himself again. Quinn’s Glock lay heavy in his hand. A perfectly kept weapon, waiting to be used. He shoved it into the back of his jeans and got up.

 

Eliot stopped at the table where Hardison had set up his equipment.

“We need to get going.”

Hardison nodded. “Just a second. Almost done.”

He didn’t look up or acknowledge Eliot’s presence otherwise, leaving him to lean against the table while Hardison babbled on.

“I just need to send this off and drag this on here and let my little friends record what else they’re saying in case whatever they built into those sheetrock walls is fucking with my...connection...again.”

Eliot had heard all of that before and ignored it then as he did now. Hardison just needed to talk like a horse needed to run.

Except, he didn’t go on like he usually would and when Eliot looked down, he found a pair of soft brown eyes looking up at him, big enough to dominate the beauty of the face they belonged to. They slowly made their way over every inch of Eliot’s face, Hardison’s restless hands frozen on the corners of the laptop as if he had forgotten that he wanted to close it.

“Hey,” Eliot softened his words. “C’mon, let’s go.” He moved around the table, his good hand casually falling on Hardison’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I… sorry.” Hardison closed the laptop with a decisive thud and pushed back his chair, scraping dangerously close past Eliot’s boots as he pushed up and silently made his way into the room.

 

Hardison was standing on the table against the back wall, taping an antenna to the rear window, when Eliot finally found the courage to ask.

“You really ok with it?”

Hardison had the good graces not to pretend confusion over what the question was about. Eliot clarified nonetheless. “I mean, I know Parker is fine. She adores Quinn...”

“Yeah, because he’s just as crazy for heights as she is. You should’ve heard them talk, man. While we were waiting for-” Hardison faltered, the beginning of the happy smile on his face folding into itself. “I… please don’t ever do something like this ever again. I’ll implant a tracker. Won’t hurt, I promise. Whatever… just…” He swayed on the table.

Eliot was up and by Hardison’s side in an instant, his functioning hand against Hardison’s back to stabilize him. “Dammit, Hardison. Not now. I can’t catch you if you fall.”

Hardison balked. Then he deflated again, calmer but no less himself.

“Not gonna fall off, man. What the hell. I’m fine.”

He hopped off and brushed past Eliot, always too close, as if he thought he took up a much smaller space than his huge body really filled. “With everything,” he added.

At that Eliot leaned against the table again, his arms crossed, just watching Hardison for a moment as he fiddled with the notebook and the modem and whatever else he had hidden in his electronics salad.

“Really…”

“Yes, really! Look man… “ Hardison took a deep breath as he glanced up but didn’t stop working. “I’m fine with the idea. I got Parker but I can’t give her everything she needs. And you got us but that’s not… You know? I mean, yeah, initially he was just another hitter, a pair of fists and just missing…” He gestured Eliot up and down. “Your cool parts or whatever. But when they took you…” He shook his head. “Did you know that his ID, the Julien Martin one…”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucked man.”

“I know. Can you fix it?”

Hardison sat and reopened his laptop. “Already did. Did some waterproofing too and got him another as backup. Got him some other stuff, too, that he’ll need. Not gonna lie, El... “ He leaned back and met Eliot’s eyes head on. “Quinn’s not ok. He looks fine but he’s not sleeping. We had to force him to lay down after we got you back but he was up and running two hours later. Gotta take care of him a little.”

Eliot could imagine a hundred ways to take care of Quinn. The man was beautifully susceptible to food and sleeping on silk sheets or laying in the sun with a book. Except...

“He won’t let us. He’ll take off. Quinn’s not the guy for group hugs and sticking around for too long.”

“Oh, you of little faith… the internet knows no distance, baby,” Hardison said and waggled his brows, a smile blooming from deep within, straight from his generous heart, burning through the bluster and the fake bravado that he hid behind.

Eliot barely hesitated before he kissed it off his face. “Go easy on him. You take a little getting used to. And get ready. I’ll go get Sophie.”

Before anybody could take care of Quinn, they’d first have to solve the little problem of Thomas Marx.

 

~~~

 

All warehouses shared the same unique smell regardless of their contents. A touch of metal and oil, the faint moisture that creeped out of cold concrete, and dust. The same light, too, faint streaks of greyish gold filtering through misty skylights and catching on the particles in the air.

‘Did you know that dust is mostly the excrement of mites?’ Parker had informed them out of the blue as they’d entered earlier. Nate hadn’t known and he wished he still didn’t.

He watched the vaulted ceiling above him, listening to his team whisper among themselves. Eliot ran herd on Hardison, Sophie on Eliot and his emotional state. Parker climbed through the rafters.

The man across from Nate, like Nate himself, waited.

A click of the lock echoed through the silence between all of them, followed by a strong voice, used to giving commands.

“I didn’t know you could pick locks.”

“There is quite a bit you don’t know about me, sir,” Quinn’s terse voice answered. “But I’m looking forward to you finding out.”

Before the young man could talk himself into trouble, Nate stepped out of his hiding place and into the middle of the room.

“Mr. Marx.” He let his call echo for a moment. “Or may I call you Thomas? Since it seems you are an old friend of a friend of mine.”

Marx stood half hidden behind Quinn’s big body, not much smaller but curled into himself where Quinn’s shoulders strained with tension. Marx had the posture of someone who always moved carefully because every movement could bring pain. Except where some might’ve grown fearful, he’d turned into a snake, coiled and waiting to strike. Maybe he had always been one and only shed his false skin.

“Only if I may call you Nate, Mr. Ford.” He circled around Quinn to face Nate eye to eye but, Nate noticed, he never cut off Quinn’s line of sight or hampered the access to his gun. “I _am_ a friend of Eliot’s, even if he is… how do I put this… pissed at me at the moment.”

Marx stepped closer, opening his arms and lowering his gaze in a near-perfect show of remorse as he stopped a few feet away. “I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding.”

He still wore his hair military short and he kept himself in shape, despite the disability. His suit was bespoke. He wore a weapon in a shoulder holster. This close, fine lines cut through the tan around his eyes, less a sign of age and more a sign of the kind of damage that too much sun left. He smiled with news-anchor-straight teeth.

“Where is Eliot?” Nate asked.

Marx dropped his arms with a sigh. “He is at a secure location outside Portland.”

“Unharmed?”

Here, Marx hesitated. He faked the embarrassment well with the way he bared his teeth and looked away, his eyes shifting over the background and catching at nothing. He ducked his head a little, pulling his shoulders up, making himself look harmless, like a little boy caught with the hand in the cookie jar.

Like Nate’s son had. The one thought guaranteed to not endear anyone to him.

“Three of my men are in hospital with broken bones. Eliot doesn’t take stuff like,” Marx gestured. “too well. I guess you know that. He messed up his hand and ribs along the way but nothing that would hamper him for long.” He lifted his shoulders in a wry shrug. “He did worse in Iraq on the regular. Just refused to wear proper protective gloves and busted his knuckles. The stories I could tell you…”

Plastering a polite smile onto his face Nate cut him off. “I’d rather have my hitter back, if you please.”

Marx sighed. “Of course. I guess we are at an impasse at the moment. I really want to give you his location, but first, I need to do what I came here to do, Mr. Ford.”

“And I can’t just let you do that, as we both well know.”

“The tragedy of being some of the best… we know too well what could go wrong, don’t we? And we both want something back that is ours.”

They seized each other up and as tempting as it was to just wait Marx out, the Nate Marx thought he was talking to did not know that Eliot was safe a few yards away or that Marx was trying to screw them over. He wanted his friend back and the only way to achieve that was to agree.

“Keep him talking Nate, we need more time,” Sophie reminded him and that was it: not about Eliot alone.

Nate relaxed, forced himself to look less like he wanted to murder the man in front of him, as hard as that was. “Well, you said there’s been a misunderstanding. How about we start there, Mr. Marx?”

Marx pulled back with a shrewd glint in his eyes that he masked just a millisecond too late.

“I…,” he started, paused, searched for words and Nate couldn’t possibly tell if it was for show or if he really had to try and find a convincing lie first. “Let me put it this way: I was deceived into believing that Eliot worked against me under orders of a common enemy of ours. Yours, mine, your team’s. And his apparently. Which I did not know at that point.”

Nate jumped on the opening, a chance to bring them on the same side if not in their allies then in their chosen enemies. Sophie always told him to not try and alienate their victims for once. It remained a work in progress but this one was easy. “What did Moreau do?”

His gaze shifted to Marx’s leg, then up again to his eyes, and he allowed a thin smile onto his lips, challenging Marx that he understood a lot more than he let on.

Marx didn’t play around. “He stole something from me. Something of great personal value.”

You had to live among grifters and thieves to recognize the calculation in the little dip of Marx’s eyes, the sad reminiscence in the gesture to give his words the personal touch.

“And you think you can find it here?”

“Oh, I know that I can. Me and Eliot are not on the best of terms at the moment, but he agreed that I’d been wronged and to help me out with what he knew about Moreau’s operation. So,” Marx straightened. “What do you say? My possession for your hitter?”

Hardison growled. “And to think that asshole thinks Eliot’s dead…”

Behind Marx, Quinn’s gun twitched.

He was too close to say anything without being overheard. His face, though, as he looked up in search for a camera, spoke volumes. Flickers of barely contained violence.

Eliot caught it, too. “Quinn! We still need him.”

Quinn bared his teeth.

“Yes, we do,” Eliot repeated. “And where he’s going, he’ll suffer a lot more than if you just shoot him. C’mon man, you got better control than that.”

Quinn’s eyes hardened with a last glance upward to where he suspected the cameras to be, but he lowered the gun.

Not a pardon. A temporary stay of execution

Marx hadn’t noticed anything, distracted by Nate and how he struggled to come to a decision. Showing Marx some insecurity, handing him the superior position for the moment, would mollify him in the long run.

And ‘long’ in that case meant exactly until they received what they needed.

“Let me reiterate: We let you search for your possession in exchange for Eliot’s whereabouts. Correct?”

“That would be my suggestion, yes.”

They eyed each other, Nate with cool consideration, Marx with hunger in his eyes that barely managed to take a backseat to his jovial persona.

“And if I don’t? You’re gonna kill Eliot? Even though he’s a friend?” Nate breathed deeply and took a step forward, shifting a little to the right in the process, then another step, a little more to the right of Marx. “What an interesting conundrum...you can’t say yes, because then we’ll all be in trouble, and you can’t say no because we won’t have any incentive to help you then.”

Marx turned slowly with Nate. It brought his field of vision closer to Quinn behind him but it also turned him away from the side passage Nate had originally emerged from.

And Quinn, no matter how furious, was still a professional hitter. The anger on his face smoothed out into tense neutrality and that was it.

Marx, on the other hand,...

Just before Nate did a final turn to face him again, he found the ugly truth written on Marx’s face, the snarl distorting his features, and the disgust.

Nate smiled. “If we included something else, though...like the information you collected on our team… we might agree to leave after you have your merchandise, pick up our hitter and never be seen again. You go back to your business and we to ours...Thomas.”

Marx recoiled a little but his eyes snapped to attention right away.

“You will get the information, not interfere with my search. I will give you Eliot’s location as we leave. Deal?”

“Nate.” Eliot. “The fucker has no intention of letting us leave. Shelley just took out a guy with a grenade launcher.”

Nate let his smile widen as he stepped forward and stretched out his hand. “Deal!”

After they shook hands, exchanging the data chip was quick business. Marx pulled an SD case from his breast pocket and handed it over. Quinn tapped his right leg twice for confirmation and that was that.

“Check one,” Hardison commented and exhaled deeply. “I’m pretty sure he got nothing anywhere else but with what’s on there I can specify my search routines in his system and yeah… we should be good.”

Nate nodded to both Marx and for the cameras and bowed with an overly expressive flourish towards the back of the warehouse.

“I wish I could help you but since I don’t know what you are looking for….”

“Never mind.” Marx snapped his fingers and Quinn moved, starting with the corner to their right.

 

~~~

 

Parker intercepted Quinn somewhere between machinery parts and a few suspicious looking barrels he banged against just to make some noise.

“Hey.”

Quinn lobbed a broken pallet board against the wall and stood straighter. “Should you be here?”

“No.” Parker lifted her slim shoulders and hopped onto a crate. “But I wanted to be.”

Any attempt to glare at Parker usually proved woefully ineffective so Quinn didn’t even try, just moved to the next stack of goods.

“You could tell me where you put that damn crate.”

“No.” She didn’t smile as she fell into step next to him. “It’s realer like this. Marx will be less suspicious.”

To his left a box declaring “soil samples” balanced precariously on the edge of its palett. He wondered what would give first, the wood or his steel-toed boots.

“Parker…”

“You did great.”

He watched her shift in front of him with the unstoppable fluidity of water. Her slightly off center smile flashed at him and he immediately forgave her. There was no stopping her small hands curving around his cheeks for a chaste peck. “So good! Sophie says praise is important.”

“Thanks, Sophie.” Whatever sarcasm he had wanted to put in there, his smile overrode it.

Parker knew. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“What even is all this stuff.” He pointed to a bale of orange cloth with a blue flower print that either had been in here for a very long time or was a victim of the last 80s revival.

“Customs,” Parker said. “They have the most interesting things.”

Quinn bet they had. He was afraid to ask.

“So, how much longer?” he asked instead and got a nose wrinkle in return.

Hardison jumped in on the conversation. “How about… now?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now! Email just came through. Mama, we need you here.”

“Now!” She told Quinn and raced back to her rope, pausing before she pulled herself up. “It’s on the other side. Third row, wall side. Good luck, boyfriend!”

Quinn watched her ascend in the hopes of finding a glint of light off of glass where Hardison had placed one of the cameras. Didn’t find any, of course. He just hoped they saw his dramatic eyeroll.

“Good luck to you, too…”

 

He found the crate exactly where she’d pointed him and dragged it back on an old, half-working trolley while Ford entertained Marx with stories. He seemed to have him half convinced that helping people was really just robbing big corporations blind and running off with the majority of the share.

The main aisle was maybe four yards all across. Quinn parked the trolley in the middle, leaving free range of movement for Ford to retreat back to their end of the warehouse.

Marx spared neither of them a glance as he hurried forward. There was something to be said about greed and how it made men ignore the weapons being unsheathed behind their back.

There was something to be said about Marx’s yell of unbridled rage when he broke open the lid and found nothing but cheap granite and clumps of red clay within.

“FORD!”

Nate Ford turned with his eyes glinting like he knew something nobody else did.

“A small indulgence,” he said. “A precaution.”

“Where is my merchandise?”

A slow smile tugged at Ford’s lips as he nodded slowly. “Ah yes, your property…”

“Here.” Said a new voice from behind Ford.

Heavy, rubber-soled steps announced him as a soldier and it took Quinn one glance at Marx’s neck to see the rage coloring his skin red.

“Thomas…” Colonel Michael Vance said, “did you think you could go up against one of our own and expect us to just sit it out?”

Marx’s hand froze halfway to his gun, rage replaced by recognition.

He pushed back from the crate, his shoulders shaking with barely controlled violence that he suddenly had no viable target for anymore.

“He betrayed you, Vance! Spencer switched sides in Iraq.” His voice shook. “He worked for Moreau!”

Vance stopped next to Ford, clean-shaven, slick, all government. His gaze shifted to Quinn and his gun, then went straight back to Marx. “Oh, I know.”

The act dropped as he fell into a comfortable stance, arms crossed to show off the bulk of his arms. “And do you know why I know that? Because I was the one who agreed to not renew his contract in Iraq. I let him go when he asked and he agreed to my conditions. Whenever I need a tough motherfucker to get a job done, I call Eliot Spencer. And you know what else? He always answers. _I_ betrayed him, threatened his people to get his compliance a while back. You know what Spencer did?” Vance breathed into a dramatic pause. “Saved Washington.”

He raised his head with a grin, his voice ringing under the vaulted ceiling. “Isn’t that right, Spencer?”

Behind him, a figure shifted out of the shadows, a figure that Quinn would’ve recognized everywhere, that his heart recognized with a treacherous thump in his chest. No need to see his face, because his easy step and the way he held himself, like a coil ready to spring, hands held open and ready to strike, gave him away from miles out.

Eliot rested his shoulder against a support pillar and hooked a thumb into a belt loop of his jeans. “Doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you yet, Vance.”

“Aw, c’mon, Eliot. It was for the good of the nation.”

“Yeah, like everything you do.”

Quinn counted Marx’s breaths, the quivers of his right hand under his jacket, waiting only for the moment he yanked his arm up and the gun free. The metal and plastic of the MAC molded perfectly into Quinn’s hands, the clarity of the moment when there was no doubt, nothing but the job and a trigger.

“Where’s Reimann?” Marx snapped, his back half turned at Quinn, stubbornly believing the lie for a few moments more.

Vance studied his nails. “FBI custody. Along with your surviving goons. And the nerve gas you hoarded there. He already made a deal to talk.”

Next, he pulled a stack of papers from the inside of his jacket and waved them around. Their edges had been softened by time but there was no mistaking the clean, neat rows of Marx’s handwriting. “Apparently, people hoarding nerve gas fall under terror prevention, my friend, which is a bit of a specialty of mine.”

Marx scoffed. “You know that none of this will stick, right? Even without this,” He nodded at his tally. “I got enough connections to tear up your phony claims. You can’t connect the property to me and whatever lies Reimann is pulling up, it’s the claims of a bunch of criminals against a respected businessman. No one will let you get a warrant.”

“Ah...see...here’s where you’re wrong.”

At Ford’s words, Quinn’s gaze shifted to the exceedingly smug looking mastermind. The man had retreated subtly behind Vance but obviously didn’t have enough brains to just get to cover.

Vance filed through the papers to a certain sheet, a certain row marked with a screaming yellow post it.

“Congressman - back then still Mr. - Vandermeer. Paid you 200,000 USD for setting up a meeting with a local tribal leader to negotiate a building project financed by the US army. Shame that tribal leader had close ties to the insurgents. Who could’ve known?”

“You can’t even connect these papers to me, Vance. And you know it.”

Ford lifted his right hand with the drama befitting the world’s big stages and pressed a button on the little device between his fingers.

Marx’s voice rang out loud and clear.

“....who of their trusted leaders financed the death of America’s sons because they wanted a winged bull in their office. Who signed off on gun deliveries that landed with insurgents. Such promising careers destroyed by such a small detail like a business ledger and a tally.”

“You!” Marx swirled around, his gun arm yanking free, and found himself at the business end of Quinn’s gun. “How?” Spit flew. “I had you checked out. I talked to your commanding officer,” he screamed.

Quinn took a step to the left, forced Marx’s gun a little more to the side, more firmly away from the others. Only then did he allow himself a shrug. A toothy grin.

“Friends in the right places, pal.”

His grin grew as he watched Marx dance away in an attempt to face all of them, shifting awkwardly like Rumplestiltskin, growling and almost frothing at the mouth.

It wasn’t quite as funny as it looked. One experienced man with a gun and four targets in close proximity meant someone usually got shot. For now, Quinn was the main target, the one with the gun drawn, and he’d like to keep it that way.

But of course, Ford had to step closer again.

“As my friend, Colonel Vance said, Congressman Vandermeer was very dismayed to learn he had been tricked by a criminal and like any good American citizen helped us immediately to obtain an arrest warrant for…”

He looked to Vance who pulled a freshly printed sheet of paper from his pocket.

“Smuggling. Illegal trade of antiques. Weapon smuggling.” He looked up. “I’m paraphrasing a little to keep it short. Aiding and abetting terrorism. Money laundering. Treason. Preparation of a terror attack. Attempted blackmail. Dangerous interference with road traffic. Yadda...yadda...yadda.”

Vance cleanly folded the sheet and smiled. “Thomas Marx, you’re hereby arrested.”

Quinn charged before Marx had so much as a chance to twitch the gun in their direction.

The shot Marx fired went wide and ricocheted off a piece of metal behind. Or maybe that was his way to call for help that wouldn’t come. Shelley’s voice yelled orders through the coms.

They crashed to the floor the moment shots rang out outside. The MAC got knocked from his hand but Quinn let the momentum carry him into a forward roll and pulled the Beretta from the back of his pants.

Someone in the background screamed. He’d heard that voice scream a few times too many in the last days. Like he’d had to every time before, he ignored it.

 

~~~

 

“Quinn! No!“

Eliot sprinted around Nate and Vance, Sophie’s panicked call somewhere in his ear as the first shot rang out and Marx fell straight back down from the crouch he’d managed to push himself into.

The second shot followed immediately and blood splattered over the ground. A pistol fell from Marx’s hand.

Quinn stood above him, clear-cut in his dark suit, like an avenging angel in front of the dirt-grey walls, his nostrils flaring with every barely controlled breath and his eyes boring holes into Marx.

Eliot slowed his steps barely enough to not take him down when he plowed into Quinn and shoved his gun hand aside. Surprise worked for him there, Quinn’s attention completely caught by Marx and his eyes glowing with an unholy light. His hand jerked in the iron grip Eliot had around his wrist and Eliot’s first instinct was to respond in kind, to bring him down and hold him there until the danger passed. But doing so might shatter the last bit of control Quinn still had. Anything but gentleness might shatter him.

"No, Quinn.“ He spoke the words softly, meant only for the man in front of him. "It’s ok. It’s fine.“

Not the best idea to wrap the hand with the cast around Quinn’s neck but he had nothing else to pull him close and into an embrace, wasn’t sure if that would even work until Quinn finally relented and sank against him. Eliot’s hand released his grip around Quinn’s wrist, thumbing the safety on the weapon before he curled his finger over Quinn’s on the handle.

People ran closer, Vance and Shelley, Hardison and the others hot on their heels. Eliot risked a glance at the bleeding holes in Marx’s thigh and arm. The first bullet had driven what looked like the splinters of a throwing knife deeply into the muscles of Marx’s leg. He’d be lucky if he kept that. Same with the arm.

Quinn panted hard but didn’t move against the hold of Eliot’s hands, not until Eliot carefully tugged on his hair. He lifted his head immediately. In his eyes, misery and rage still fought a brutal war over Eliot and Marx and what had happened. "Hey… I’m fine, Quinn.” Except, Quinn knew better. Eliot could fake it for Parker and Hardison, could smooth over the reactions for their sake, but not for Quinn’s. Hardison had warned him earlier; Quinn had been there. He’d seen it. Done it. Had mopped up Eliot's blood with his own hands. Had stared into the abyss, flinching but not moving when it stared back. He could handle the truth. He deserved it. Eliot drew a careful breath. “I’ll be fine.“

He brushed the tips of his broken fingers against Quinn’s cheek to turn his head and bring their lips together with barely a touch, a very deliberate touch. "Thank you.“

Quinn released all the tension in a slow breath and opened his lips with no hesitation.

Marx screamed in the background.

"You fucker! You absolute fucker. You tortured him! Hey Spencer, that was your traitor friend there that tortured you when you couldn’t see it! Did you know? Did you?“

Eliot pulled back just enough to turn his head, keeping Quinn’s face deliberately turned away from Marx, safe from him.

"Yes, I knew. And you speak about him one more time, you’ll lose your intact appendages. Still got three left.“

Like that, the spell broke and the bone breaking tension in Quinn released into a soft laugh. Hardison took a moment longer until his drawn "Oh“ broke the silence.

"What? What does he mean?“ Parker jumped to Hardison’s side. "One leg, one arm and what?“

Quinn laughed harder and Eliot caught his lips again. Carefully. They both had split lips and this was not the place to lick up each other’s blood. Not the moment, not what Quinn needed.

In the chaos around them, nobody was focused on either of them and Eliot pulled Quinn into the shadow of one of the stacks, their hands still joined around Quinn’s weapon. Nobody mentioned it.

It became awkward the moment they stepped out of the bubble of activity around Marx’s body and faced each other without adrenaline and terror.

Quinn looked away first, secured his gun and shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants, one of which was false and secured easy access to a knife on his thigh.

Eliot knew that, like he knew Quinn’s favorite foods and his most creative French curses, that he preferred scotch over bourbon and his favorite movie was the Wind and the Lion, not Tombstone. That one came a close second.

"You gotta go, don’t you?“ he asked in lieu of something better to say. His reward was a wry grin from Quinn, not quite eye contact but good enough for the moment. A Quinn grin, back where it belonged.

"Yeah. Need to get my head on straight.“ He circled his finger, encircling everything around them in the gesture. "You gotta get yourself and your two weirdos on straight.“

Eliot chuckled and now it was his turn to look away. "I’m not sure how much ‘straight‘ that’ll include, but yeah…“

"Yeah…“

They both looked away.

Quinn grounded his stance, weight centered easily somewhere low in his body, smirking like a bastard as he asked. "You think this whole thing qualifies for a favor?“

"A favor?“ Eliot gawked.

"Yep. You to me. Owed.”

Eliot had thought they were past that, but apparently not.

If Quinn needed the reassurance because he couldn’t believe that Eliot would have his back...

“You got it.”

“Good.” Something sly crossed Quinn’s face. “I’m calling it.”

“What, now? We just came out of a -”

Quinn bent down and took Eliot’s injured hand, lifting it with practiced care until they both looked at the bruised and swollen flesh visible at the edges of the cast.

“Now,” Quinn confirmed. “You’ll take this to a doctor. A hand surgeon. Get x-rays. Let them cut you open if necessary to fix this. And then you’ll take time off until the _doctor_ says it’s ok.” He weighed his head and grinned. “Without you threatening them.”

“That’s…” Blackmail, impossible, not what I do.

Quinn cut him off before Eliot could find the words. “On your honor.”

Eliot closed his eyes and sighed. “I hate hospitals.”

“Don’t we all?”

And like a cat out of the shadows, Parker appeared at Eliot’s elbow and slipped under his arm with one of her slightly unsettling smiles for Quinn. “Don’t we all what?”

Hardison wasn’t far behind. “Don’t ask, momma. It’s probably something nasty.”

An envelope appeared in his hand that he shoved at Quinn with no protest accepted.

“Passport, clean identity, hotel booked for three nights, credit card for plane tickets to wherever you wanna go. Courtesy of one Thomas Marx. It’s mostly what he owed you and some interest. Travel expenses… you know? Stuff like that.”

Quinn stared at Hardison’s hand, more pensive than dumbfounded until Parker nudged the envelope closer to him.

“You don’t need to pay me,” he said, not quite meeting their eyes.

Parker nudged again.

“Just take it.” The tired heaviness in his own voice surprised Eliot but there was nothing he could do about it. Not now, not like this, not with so much polite friendliness on Quinn’s face. Like a stranger that had overtaken the man Eliot could still faintly taste on his lips.

That was Quinn. Always ready to go, to build the barriers he needed to never get too close. To never let anybody hurt him.

But he took the envelope from Hardison’s hand with an apologetic smile, sadness softening his eyes for a second.

“You’ll take good care of each other. I need a long, hot shower. I feel like I touched something smelly.”

His smile sharpened with one last glance at Marx still bleeding on the concrete floor, then he turned and headed for the door, his gaze fixed straight ahead. He picked up the MAC on the way.

Hardison let his hand drop but otherwise, none of them moved, maybe didn’t even breathe.

The moment hung suspended between them, a connection pulling taut after the jump, each second of the fall ticking by, increasing the chance that it would snap.

“Quinn!” Eliot called.

Quinn stopped and cast a glance back, not bothering to turn around.

“Keep the phone and the number. Don’t make me sic Hardison on you.”

Quinn’s laugh at least wasn’t a ‘no’ as he strolled out of the warehouse, waving goodbye over his shoulder with the envelope in his hand.

Parker followed his retreating form with something akin to sadness on her face, as if she had lost something that she didn’t need but wanted nonetheless.

“Will he do it?” she asked, looking up at Eliot.

Hardison’s phone beeped before Eliot had a chance to answer.

“Quinn says I gotta find you the best hand surgeon in DC? What’s up with that?”

Eliot rolled his eyes and turned, taking Parker, pressed against his side, with him. “Yeah. Do it.”

He wanted to sneak them out the door and get them somewhere private.

The last thing he needed was Vance stopping next to them, especially not when it came with that friendly pat on the back and the way he watched the door Quinn had just walked out of. Before that could go further, Eliot grabbed his friend’s wrist with enough force to be just this side of painful. “No, Vance! Remember what I said. He’s not for your teams."

Vance seemed to ponder a protest but, ultimately, a man didn’t get where he was by being stupid. He pulled out his most charming smile and patted Eliot’s back again.

“Good work. I’ll make sure Marx will never be your problem again.”

“Yeah, because accidents happen,” Shelley yelled from where he was fleecing Marx.

For a while there, Eliot had forgotten that the man had been their friend, too.

“This ain’t Uzbekistan, Shelley.”

“Pah! If Uzbekistan doesn’t come to the man, the man has to come to Uzbekistan.”

Vance laughed as he turned away and walked over to Nate and that was a thought…

Nate Ford and Michael Vance were a pair able to destroy the world by trying to save it.

“Scary…” Hardison voiced Eliot’s concern.

“Let’s just go.”

It was Parker pulling Eliot along this time. Hardison followed.

“Yeah. Let’s get Eliot settled. Man got an early appointment tomorrow and I just bet Nate and Sophie’ll be at our door soon-ish.”

Eliot’s eyes caught Marx’s gaze across the distance. Weird thing, if he’d just asked, Eliot might as well have told him.

He turned and followed Parker out. Quinn was long gone.

“Nap?” she asked.

Eliot nodded.

Hardison slung his bag over his shoulder and uttered a heartfelt, “Oh yeah.”

 

~~~

 

Quinn stepped onto a plane two days later.

He’d bought his tickets economy on a Lufthansa flight to Charles de Gaulle and received an email not an hour later that he had been upgraded to first.

First class was about as needlessly luxurious as he imagined but he wouldn’t complain. The movie selection was good, he had space to stretch his aching bones. The food probably was even edible, but mostly: it was private.

He hadn’t bothered talking to people since the warehouse. Had barely checked for open job offers yet.

He would maybe take a few weeks off, hang around his small apartment in Strasbourg, let the bruises fade and his sleep rhythm normalize. It always did eventually. He always leveled out in the end. It was what he did: survive. No matter what.

Lick his wounds and keep going.

Maybe even admit to the Eliot- sized hole in his heart. Not because of the distance. Not because of his absence. No. They had walked away from each other so many times now that it felt natural.  But each time there had been the unspoken knowledge of the next time.

This time…

Maybe Eliot Spencer had no Quinn-sized hole in his life. Maybe it was already filing with crazy energy and people who could give him more than just violence.

Maybe, in a few months when everything had settled, there would be no call.

Maybe Eliot Spencer didn’t need someone in his life who was unable to handle the thought of making himself vulnerable by settling down, someone whose life existed in a go bag, just in case he needed to run.

Looking out of the window to the depressing dribble of East Coast rain, Quinn almost missed the flash of an incoming file transfer. He only caught it because the flight attendant reminded him with a smile to turn his phone to flight mode.

He needn’t have worried. The file gave itself permission to download before his eyes.

Before a whiff of panic could settle in, Quinn’s mind had already decided how stupidly amused he was by Hardison’s criminal disregard for personal space. No anger, no desperate need to defend his borders, just a touch of warmth. No idea how he’d feel about it tomorrow. Now was weird enough.

“Yo, boyfriend! I hope you enjoy the accommodations. Don’t ever insult me again by booking economy. Man, seriously, that’s disgusting. Why would you do that?

Anyway…

We just got a very doped Eliot home. Shelley is parked out in the living room of the suite. As if we couldn’t survive for a day while El’s conked out on drugs.

It’s not that people don’t wanna kill us on occasion or something, but heck, we’ll manage to not get in trouble for a few hours, you know?”

“No,” Quinn answered the recording, soundlessly laughing as the plane rolled to the runway.

“Vance got a military surgeon friend of his to fix the damage. The new and the old. Did you know how much old damage there was? Some of his knuckles had been broken so many times they lost _shape_.

Parker wants to know how _your_ hands are now. She finds hands extremely important. Me too, by the way.

But… Not the point. Point is - and if you ever tell Eliot about this, I’m dead. D-E-D. Alright? Putting my hands in your life and all that jazz.

So, we were doing a job on a record company a while back and I might’ve copied shit I wasn’t supposed to. Because, hello, criminal! Blackmail material! Just don’t tell Eliot.

Oh and, when you’re in trouble use the damn credit card, that’s what it’s there for. Or I’ll have Parker kick your sorry ass the next time.

Enjoy! The song. Not the ass kicking. Though you’ll probably do that too. Y’all nasty, man. Like seriously, doesn’t anybody think of the children?”

Quinn stared at the smartphone in his hand with the dumbfounded expression he reserved for things Hardison, but if he’d learned one thing in the last week it was to roll with it. He pressed play on the second sound file.

The wistful first chords were an unknown. The voice was not.

By the third repeat, Washington was vanishing below him and he moved his lips along to the words.

“So go on and go if you're really leaving/ Put a million miles between us/ But you'll still feel me/ Like I'm right there at your side”

When the flight attendant came to ask him if he needed anything, eyeing the fading bruises and cuts on his face with honest worry, Quinn smiled.

He ordered a café au lait. Eight hours of flight were a long time to stay awake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sing is of course [Thinking of You by Christian Kane](https://youtu.be/Wlc_PlLd0bE) as sung in "The Studio Job"


	12. Coming Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go :)  
> My heartfelt thanks to Eridani who watches episodes from shows she is not in the fandom of just to be able to talk to me.  
> Many thanks to the Discord for listening to my screaming and absolutely huge, HUGE thanks to BurningTea who I just kind of writernapped and started screaming at and she somehow responded and helped me polish this thing into something that works.
> 
> *** Info ahead:  
> "Weave a circle round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread. For he on honey-dew hath fed and drunk the milk of Paradise." is a line from the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as recited by Doc Holiday in the movie Tombstone.
> 
> Song for this chapter is Coming Home by Skylar Grey

He'd planned on spending Christmas working. When that fell through because his focus was still shot, he decided to stay in Strasbourg and not do anything.

That was before a booking confirmation for an exclusive ski resort somehow found its way to his apartment. The note attached said, “How fast can you go down a mountain? Skyscrapers still win.”

As if Quinn could ever have resisted a challenge.

The answer was: pretty damn fast.

He spent Christmas day roaring down a mountain until there was nothing left but the rush of speed and the biting cold and too much white to have room for blood.

Trudging back to his luxurious hotel room, his legs heavy and ice still prickling over his skin, he found another booking confirmation on his door - massage. Maybe it was the grounded calm of the mountains or the quiet in his head, Quinn just gave in.

Apparently _someone_ was on a mission.

He hadn’t ordered the dinner that waited for him when he returned, either; venison, cranberry sauce, Austrian dumplings and a wine so perfectly fitting that it had to be Eliot’s doing. What Hardison imagined a proper dinner probably included the whole menu and five different bottles.

Quinn ate with one eye on the gift-wrapped packages on the bed, trying to find even a smidge of annoyance, tried still as he was drinking another glass of wine on the balcony overlooking the snow-covered mountains. No show.

The jagged edges of the mountains peeked through the wide snowfields, like ancient, watchful guardians. Quinn had always turned to the mountains for quiet, even before basic training had put a gun in his hand and said: “climb that”.

He wasn’t quite sure if Parker or Eliot had made the connection. He didn’t care.

Looking over his shoulder, he noticed the packages on his bed again. Not the desk, his bed, and no, still no annoyance. Nothing but a faint need to smile. Somewhere at the other end of the world, three people might be getting up about now, knowing that Quinn would be having to deal with the fact that it was Christmas and someone had thought of him.

It wasn’t that he hated the holidays per se, he just had no idea what to do with them. He had no template for how to navigate all that came with it. He downed his wine and decided that this thought was much easier dealt with if he didn’t deal with it at all.

When he carefully peeled back the paper from the first gift, he found a kindle inside. ‘$500 already in your account. Go wild.”

Quinn eyed the stack of three worn paperbacks on the bedside table. He didn’t to bother ask how Hardison knew anything anymore.

The second gift held a box of cookies. “I stole them from Eliot for you. They taste better that way.”

Quinn turned the card and found himself face to face with a miniature drawing. A man sleeping, one bare shoulder visible. His half-long hair tumbled over his forehead and temple, just kissing his cheekbone to frame a sleepily blinking eye and the smile that Eliot Spencer wore only on those rare occasions when he woke in safety and for a few precious seconds forgot who he was supposed to be.

No way in hell did the man know this picture existed, but, Quinn decided, as he shoved a cinnamon cookie into his mouth and flopped back onto the bed, he never needed to.

He placed the card - picture to the front - onto the book stack and ate a second cookie.

The last package contained a book, a plain bookstore version of an English poetry collection. No card. Just two lines in strong, curving scrawl: _Weave a circle round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread. For he on honey-dew hath fed and drunk the milk of Paradise._

Nobody was there to witness how Quinn's thumb brushed along the blue ink or how he had to catch himself smiling in the mirror before he schooled his face. Because Eliot, beyond any doubt and despite his combat abilities, was not ambidextrous. He would always only write with his dominant right hand, the broken hand.

A sickening wave of relief crashed over Quinn, tilting his world sideways.

“He’s ok,” he tested the words in a whisper as if he hadn’t known all along. He’d known Eliot would be fine. He’d read it in all of Hardison’s notes, in bits of info that showed up on his phone at random times, but it had never been tangible like this, shredding the ‘what if’ with absolute finality.

There was no reason, no reason at all, to let himself fall backward onto the bed with the book pressed against his chest or to grin like a maniac at the ceiling. No reason except the pure elation of relief, the weight falling off his shoulders.

_He’s ok._

“I’m your Huckleberry,” he texted Eliot, still smiling, and ate another cookie.

 

~~~

 

New Year, he spent in Barcelona. He didn’t even bat an eyelash when an elegant hand slipped into his elbow and he found an aristocratically beautiful face smiling up at him.

“Splendid, isn’t it?” Sophie Devereaux asked, laughing as Quinn rolled his eyes.

She needed a bodyguard for a small con. Much better than the thought that Hardison was sending his team after Quinn all across the world so he wouldn’t be alone. He wasn’t that miserable.

Sophie patted his arm and lied with patented ease. “Of course not, dear.”

Parker called him at 4 am, the faint hum of Portland traffic in the background. He lay on his bed, not really drunk, just a little fuzzy around the edges. He didn’t get drunk.

A beautifully crafted cylinder seal slipped between his fingers, fingertips dipping over intendations, lions, eagles: a warrior’s seal. Eliot wanted him to have that one with the lions, Sophie had said. The rest had been locked down as evidence and claimed by the US Army for eventual return to Iraq. But who’d miss a cylinder seal?

Quinn raised it to his eyes while he listened to Parker complain about how Eliot had banished her from the kitchen and how that wasn’t fair because it wasn’t her fault his food was so good.

She sent him a picture of Eliot in a red apron, hair tied back with a bandana and threatening whoever was holding the camera. Quinn put her on speaker and the phone on the pillow next to him so they could laugh at how ridiculous Eliot looked. She told him about their last jobs and how Hardison had slipped on a wet patch trying to chase down a bad guy and bruised his tailbone. Quinn didn’t quite get the end of the phone call. He fell asleep laughing somewhere around the forty minute mark.

The picture was still there when he woke. There were worse things to start a year with than Eliot Spencer brandishing a knife at him. That counted as a good luck sign. That was why he put it as his phone background.

 

~~~

 

He called Nikolai mid-January.

The job ran two weeks and crossed half of Europe. It didn’t just end with a retrieved wedding ring and a much happier still-husband, but also a crowbar to Quinn’s head. As he stumbled back into his apartment and dropped into bed like a sack of flour, he remembered too late that he also had had dislocated a shoulder.

The headaches woke him, or maybe it was the incessant blinking of the phone on his nightstand. The screen, when he finally managed to pull it down onto the bed, said five unread messages and six missed calls. The first was, “Are you ok?”

Which Quinn obviously wasn’t. Not bad 'not ok', just plain not so ok. In need of more sleep and a handful of painkillers not ok.

He swiped it aside and closed his eyes again. The phone didn’t stop blinking.

“Drop me a line when you’re awake.”

Who?

He grabbed the phone and rolled onto his back to get a clearer look at the number. 

No names, of course, but the Portland area code was enough. His fingers gripped the phone a little tighter as he swiped to the message from two hours ago. “For fucks sake, answer your damn phone”

It would've made him grin despite the flaming pain in his head if the next message hadn’t stop him in his tracks, an hour after the last, like a clockwork. “Seriously, do you need help?”

He imagined an Eliot who said something like this after the anger, who sounded soft, who cared.

The last message just read, “Please, Quinn…”

Five minutes ago.

Heaviness like a vise closed around his chest and Quinn idly wondered if that was what a heart attack felt like, his heartbeat struggling against whatever held it hostage, like a desperate fight he knew he'd lose in the end.

Inevitable.

He might gleefully murder anybody who'd made Eliot Spencer so much as utter the word ‘please’. Impossible, given the situation, so he reached out, instead, and ran a finger along the side of the phone in apology. As if the man on the other side could feel the warmth, those little sparks that bloomed in Quinn's chest in lieu of words. He didn't have these fucking words.

Because that man wasn't for him to-

Oh…

“Shit,” he whispered to Parker’s Christmas card on the nightstand and took a breath that expanded his lungs until it hurt.

Concussions where not an ideal time for an epiphany.

He looked down and still found his fingers gently curled around the phone. He found them shaking. And there was Eliot, brandishing the knife. Lucky charm, my ass. Quinn didn’t think before he brushed his thumb over the picture.

So, there was that.

Before he could let go the screen flashed again.

"Please tell our man youre okay before he busts something - got my hand on the button to send the cavalry.  Im talking amublance, rescue squad, Sophie, a giant pile of cupcakes..."

Despite himself, Quinn snorted a laugh into his pillow, burying his face so nobody might hear it or the more broken sounds he made. He didn’t need these people in his life, didn’t need the complication. Except he was miserable and woozy and the numbness was creeping back into his thoughts and the idea alone that someone cared, that someone cared enough for him to worry, that Eliot cared….

He tapped one-eyed on the screen until words happened. He had to trust Hardison to translate them for Eliot.

"mFine"

"Bruised"

"Tired"

"cussion.c"

"CCAKES."

“Thx b-friend”

 

  
Quinn tried hard not to fall asleep again, at least not before he'd had some painkillers to calm the raging pain in his shoulder and head, or an answer.

He failed on all accounts and had ample opportunity to regretted it when he woke, his body possibly even more stiff and his phone flashing no less furiously.

"You're not supposed to sleep with a concussion."

"Quinn?"

"I'll beat your ass"

"C'mon, get up"

Five more missed calls.

The doorbell rang. It rang two more times before he'd managed to drag himself out of bed and to the door, gun in hand.

Outside, he found a young woman with stone-cold eyes and steady hands. No weapons, maybe a knife in an ankle sheath, but fuck if he knew.  She held a paper-wrapped package and handed him a sealed envelope.

Quinn kicked the door shut and tore open the envelope as best as he could with the aim of a cross-eyed mollusk.

It took him almost five minutes to work through the printed copy of a short, hand-written letter, by the end of which he barely managed to open the door again, take a picture and send it for confirmation. That she didn’t try and force entry in the meantime was, actually, probably proof enough that she wasn’t here to kill him. Potentially. Not that Quinn trusted his concussed brain enough to make that decision.

Eliot made it for him with a firm, “Let her in.”

Only Eliot could manage to sound firm and slightly annoyed over text message. Only Eliot.

Her voice carried the distinctive lilt of the eastern Mediterranean. "I couldn't find cupcakes. I hope macarons do, Mr. Martin."

Quinn eyed the package in her hands and turned back to his living room. Hardison swore she wasn't Mossad and that had to do.

The last thing he expected when she helped him onto his couch and out of his three-day-old dress shirt was a soft kiss to his cheek. Not even as she telegraphed it from three miles away. She tucked a blanket around him. "I'm supposed to give you that as well."

He didn’t quite dare ask from whom, but he grinned anyway.

 

~~~

 

In March, Quinn was half an hour out of Geneva and thirty pages into his thriller when his phone rang. The first body had just dropped at the unsuspecting main character’s feet.

Unknown number.

He seriously pondered just ignoring the intrusion but his customer was of the nervous sort and the amount of money involved too big to be unprofessional.

“Bonjour.”

“I'm glad you kept the phone.”

Under Quinn’s fingers, the page wrinkled. Somewhere between the sickening thud of a head on asphalt and the shocked screams of a woman in a business dress. Who cared for fictional murders.

“Your girlfriend likes to call me in the middle of the night,” Quinn said, helpless against the little grin that tugged on his lips.

“Yeah, she does that. It’s not in the middle of the night, though,” Eliot said, even if he sounded like it.

Quinn checked his watch. Ten am in Switzerland. “Not for me at least.”

“I just closed the pub. On my way home. You?”

The door to Quinn’s section opened and a man in a sharp pressed dark blue uniform with unbearably correct posture entered. His French was as sharp as only a Swiss conductor could manage, blessed with an unholy amount of God-given authority. Swiss things.

“Train to Marseille,” Quinn told Eliot as he handed over his ticket. Paid for in cash, no form of ID necessary. He loved European trains.

Eliot waited until the conductor had moved on before he spoke again. “Work?”

Quinn hummed. “Transport.”

“Legal?”

“Oh, yes. Well, mostly. Nothing but a nice little trip to the south.”

“That’s just a few hours. What do they need you for?”

Quinn smiled at the curiosity and leaned deeper into his seat.

The wagon was almost empty. A little too late for commuters, a little too early for tourists, and backpacking students couldn’t afford first class.

It felt private, a normal conversation between him and the tired, grumpy guy on the other end. Nothing of the four months of silence between them, bar the occasional text message. He’d missed that voice. The version in his memory, subject of many sad late-night solo handjobs in too large hotel beds, just hadn’t done it justice.

Quinn had almost managed to convince himself that the natural intimacy between him and this man had all been in his head, that they never had slotted together as two sides of the same damn coin, on the job and off. And then the concussion had happened, and well…

But Eliot hadn’t called and Quinn hadn’t forced the issue.

“I’m changing transport in Marseille,” he said now, absolute trust in Eliot’s ability to understand.

He did, of course. “Oh, past Gibraltar.”

For the first time, Quinn heard a smile in his voice.

“Going home?”

Home. Difficult concept. Strasbourg. The South. North Africa. They all held pieces. Pieces Quinn liked. But none he would fight to return to under any circumstances. None that held his heart. Never had. He’d walked away from home as a terrified and traumatized fifteen-year-old and he had yet to stop moving.

“I don’t exactly subscribe to that concept, you know? But yeah, will be nice to see the sun for a change.”

Eliot laughed. “Damn, there go my chances.”

Quinn’s thoughts stumbled.

Outside the window, snow-covered mountains begged him to just get out, get on a snowboard and forget it all. Run and breathe free.

And in here…

“Ah...you know me. I’m flexible. It all depends on the terms.”

Eliot hesitated. “It’s… an open-ended offer.”

Quinn sat straighter, shifting closer to the cold of the window and the mountains.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Wanna get the boat out of the dock again. She needs to be moved.”

“You don’t wanna do it alone.”

Silence stretched on the other end. “I wanna do it with you.”

The rat-tat-tat of the train's wheels sounded unnaturally loud all of a sudden, the soft ‘swish’ of the door opening like a violent intrusion. His own heart seemed to try and steal his breath.

Screw the job. Screw 40,000 Euros. Screw the North African sun and the smell of the markets of Tanger.

Screw his reputation, freedom and ability to chose his jobs… not.

He calculated quickly. If he reached Barcelona today he could make the ferry tomorrow and the airport by Saturday.

“Four days,” he said. “Casablanca. I…”

This might be too much. Or it might be the natural extension of whatever weird fetish Hardison had with getting stuff for other people.

“Can you get me a ticket?”

He heard Eliot unlock his apartment door with the slight hitch in the lock that made it so damn hard to crack. He heard it close and then Eliot’s voice again, suddenly a lot more intimate. Dropped a few tones, caressing Quinn’s nerves with a promise he knew Eliot intended to keep.

He didn’t make any other promises.

“Deal,” he said. “How long can you stay?”

“However long I want. Got no work lined up.”

He heard Eliot’s smirk in his voice, no comparison to the earlier softness. “Good. Don’t take any.”

Quinn’s breath condensed against the window pane. He grinned and didn’t grace the order with an answer.

 

~~~

 

Oregon in March was just a tad warmer than in autumn, but no bit less wet.

Water dripped from the trees lining the road as he drove through the milky morning light toward Astoria. The last time he’d driven this road, he’d slaughtered the speed limit in the process. Today, he had trouble even hitting it.

The old lady waved when she saw him pull into the parking space, her fingers wrapped in colorful wool. She saw his duffle and smiled, nodding towards the pier.

“Go on,” she called. “He’s been at it for hours.” And then she laughed, her voice carrying far over the water. If Eliot hadn’t yet known that Quinn was here, he did so now.

He definitely did. Looking down the deserted pier, Quinn found him leaning casually against the railing of his boat. His deep red flannel jacket was the only splash of color amid the depressed grays of the water and the sky, still covered boats not adding anything of value to the monochrome landscape.

Him, Eliot and knitting lady were the only humans out here. Those with enough money to own a boat preferred to not deal with anything but sunshine.

Waves lapped against the docks, a soft breathing rhythm promising calm and a certain kind of freedom far from everything that tried to kill them. Except each other.

'Hope is a terrible adviser', Marx had said.

He’d been right. Crushed hopes hurt and they were pretty useless on top. But when it came to creating a life-threatening opening, nothing compared to the giddy, joyful knot behind Quinn’s sternum that sent happy sparks to every cell of his body, making sure that no part of him escaped unscathed in case this went wrong.

Hope was only the dumb idea that made him move forward anyway.

Quinn counted his steps as they hollowly rang on the wooden planks, a biofeedback trick he had learned as a child without knowing what it was that he did, only that it helped.

It always helped, exactly up to the moment he stopped next to the boat.

Eliot looked down at him with a faint smile, his blue eyes gleaming far more brightly in the foggy twilight.  He wore a hoodie under the flannel jacket in a concession to the fact that it was technically still winter, along with worn-out jeans that molded around his powerful legs, and a pair of heavy-duty boots. His hair had been cut recently, leaving it just long enough to turn a little in the moist air, and it made him look soft and easy. Too damn beautiful.

“Permission to come on board, sir?” Quinn grinned.

“This is not the fucking navy,” Eliot shot back and reached down to take the duffel while Quinn climbed up on deck.

“So, you’ll try to kick my ass when I say, 'Aye, aye, Captain?'”

“One of these days, Quinn, I swear…” Eliot trailed off.

They had a comfortable arm’s length between them, easy to bridge. Neither did.

Eliot looked Quinn up and down, an Eliot thing Quinn had gotten used to after the first two times. Check for injuries, check for weapons, check for ‘other’.

It gave Quinn the chance to subtly study the way each of Eliot’s fingers curled around the handle of the duffle. He found no discernible weakness. The only sign that anything that ever been amiss were the still growing fingernails and a few, faint scars crossing his knuckles.

Eliot looked as healthy as he ever did, blue eyes sparking and his skin the healthy bronze tone he had so painfully been missing the last time Quinn saw him. He stood with the easy confidence of a man who knew he could take anything life threw at him. Eliot looked like he had thoroughly moved past Thomas Marx.

"You look good," Quinn broke the silence.   

Eliot’s mouth lifted a little but without enough conviction to negate his drawn brows.

"Don't get me wrong,” he said, “but I can't say the same. When was the last time you slept?"

"I just had a twelve-hour flight. I had time to sleep."

"You don't sleep on planes and never in public," Eliot admonished him and his smile told Quinn how much he cherished having that information.

Sometimes Quinn wondered how they had come to know each other that well.

And how shit could be this awkward regardless.

What did it matter that Quinn hadn't slept since Marseille, too busy crossing the distance to come here?

Eliot’s right hand dropped the duffle and reached up as if to touch Quinn's face but hesitated on the last, weird inch, asking for permission. He dropped it before it could be given.

A seagull cawed above them, like a last extension for Quinn to find something to say. Apology, explanation, anything. He made a face.

Eliot stepped back, brows drawn. "Get your ass downstairs and get a shower and some sleep. I’ll get us to sea."

It was a fleeting moment.

He bumped into the duffle and as soon as he looked down, a faint smile replaced the frown.

"I hope you have some real clothes in there." He nodded to Quinn's non-descript travel suit. "This ain't work."

Quinn couldn’t help but laugh at the call back to a conversation they’d had months ago about Quinn’s work clothes and a secret wish of Eliot’s to see him in jeans. Quinn wanted to tell him that he'd bought a new pair a while back but didn't get the chance.

A pair of heavy arms wrapped around his shoulders to pulled him into a tight embrace and the touch of soft lips against his cheek.

"It's good you're here," Eliot whispered and it sounded like forgiveness and relief at the same time.

If he turned his head, Quinn would find those lips and find out if Washington had been goodbye.

"Sorry I left you waiting," Eliot murmured, heavy fingers shoving into Quinn's curls with what came close to a relieved sigh.

“What for?”

“To call you.”

Quinn's heart stumbled recalling what they both had said - what _he_ had said - in the hut, alone with an Eliot he had been sure wouldn't know anything but that he was home with his partners come morning.

"You remember..." Not quite joy, not quite dread. More insecurity. He’d take whatever he could get, as pathetic as it might be. But he wanted. He wanted.

"As much as I could."

Quinn raised his arms and curled his hands into Eliot's jacket, holding himself close with his face hidden against Eliot's shoulder. "How much?"

Eliot helped him, held his head in place with a gentle touch and soothed his anxiety with a soft huff of laughter.

"I figured it out. I didn't fuck up. I called you." His voiced dropped a few notes, a low murmur just for Quinn. "You're here."

He was. Because he couldn't have stayed away for all the world. He tried. They hadn't let him. And though Quinn didn't understand, it didn't matter.

He pushed back against the hand at the back of his head and immediately was granted the room to turn his head.

"Sorry to make things complicated," he murmured against Eliot's mouth, grinning already.

"Have you met us?" Eliot snorted and caught Quinn's lip with his teeth. A short, sharp bite, followed by a sweet brush of his lips to sooth it.

"Regrettably, yes."

Eliot pulled away with a laugh that smoothed into a warm chuckle. His hand lingered against Quinn's head, holding him right there while they drank in the look on each other's faces.

The shore in a sea of cluelessness.

Under their feet, the boat swayed gently. Seabirds cried above, greeting the dull morning.

"Go, get some sleep," Eliot murmured and let go, stepping back with a little smile firmly in place this time.

Quinn grabbed his duffle and just gave up trying to get control of his own face.

He leaned forward and stole another swift kiss, and headed below deck.

 

Eliot had no habit of luxury. The quarters consisted of a bedroom/ living room with a table, a couch and the queen-sized bed, a tiny bath and an only somewhat oversized kitchen/pantry.

Quinn had no idea how much a custom job boat cost but every inch of the earthy tones and marine accents screamed Eliot.

The satin sheets on the other hand... midnight blue, five-star-hotel thread count.

Quinn dropped his bag and shrugged out of his suit jacket. He draped it over a chair and let the rest of his clothes follow. Who cared if he looked utterly smitten at the thought that his... his lover had gotten satin sheets in Quinn's favorite color instead of sensible cotton.

 

He woke to a pair of rough and heavy hands slowly running up the back of his legs and over his brief-clad ass before a soft kiss brushed over his lower back.

Eliot kept no clock in this bedroom on principle, but there was sun outside. 

Bright, glittering sun that tickled Quinn’s eyes.

Smiling into the smell of clean fabric, he let wakefulness rise a little slower to enjoy more of the way the hands painted up his sides. The fingertips were rough with callouses but careful in their touch, moving around sensitive areas as if they followed a secret map of Quinn’s body. They followed the soft tickle of the slow kisses working up Quinn’s spine. He never quite slept like when he knew that anything trying to get to him had to go through Eliot Spencer first. And he never quite relaxed like he did under hands he knew would stop when he asked them to.

Rolling onto his back, Quinn stretched his arms over his head and let the backs of his hands hit the pillow. It took about three seconds and Eliot had folded their fingers together to hold him there. The next kiss met Quinn's sternum, right above his heart, the same place Eliot’s smile hit when he glanced up from under his lashes.

"I like this morning routine," Quinn mumbled and shifted his hips up, against Eliot's, casually letting him know how ok what he was doing was, giving him permission for more.

The smile widened. Eliot pushed his body up until they came face to face and he could frame Quinn’s head with his forearms.

"Can you focus for another five minutes?" he asked.

"Darlin', right now there is nothing I am but focused."

Eliot sighed and closed his eyes, either praying to God for patience or finally admitting to himself that he’d deserved that answer. “Job focus," he grumbled, destroying Quinn’s hope for sex before they had the serious talk they needed to have.

He let his head fall back with a groan. "Who do you need dead?"

"Not that kind of job. Low risk. Lot's of free time. Fixed salary no matter the outcome. Free board and lodging."

Quinn wriggled one leg free and wrapped it around Eliot's calf. Eliot had gotten rid of most of his upper wear but still was in shirt and jeans. That did not stop Quinn. Just because something was important enough that Eliot brought it up in bed, didn’t mean Quinn hat to fake good behavior.

Not when he finally was here and that delicious weight pressed down on him close enough to feel Eliot’s heartbeat again. He would never admit that out loud.

"What's the job?"

"VA hospital director is ripping off patients. We think he's cashing in on therapy they never get and then are barred from. We need a patient."

"I never served in the US."

Eliot's eyes softened as he looked down on Quinn, his fingers tightening.

"Exactly. No fingerprints or DNA for Hardison to try and delete from very deep government databases. He claims it's much easier to get data in than out."

"So that's why you brought me here... work." Quinn’s lips twitched. A small challenge to all the things that existed unspoken between them. Hope might be a terrible adviser but she was also the mother of courage.

Quinn knew he’d take this job, he’d take every job for this crew and that might become a problem in the future. Today, his only problem narrowed his eyes and took the bait.

"No. I called you because I missed you. The job is an attempt to get you to stick around for a while."

Not aggressive or annoyed. Fond. He sounded, maybe, even happy as he shifted his face closer to Quinn’s field of view.

"You missed me..."

Eliot shrugged, no sign of embarrassment in sight. "Yes."

"You wanna take me to Portland."

_You missed me..._

"Yes. If you don't wanna stay in the guest room, Hardison bought an apartment near the pub." He rolled his eyes with the long-suffering resignation of someone who loved Hardison but also knew him far too well.

"And where will you be if I choose the guestroom?"

Eliot smiled. "The bed is big enough. We'll figure it out. You in?"

A little voice at the back of Quinn's head screeched alarm - connection, permanence, people, the threat of failure.

_You missed me..._

Quinn locked eyes with the man who held him down so easily and so carefully, and grinned.

"Absolutely."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and commenting.  
> I hope you enjoyed the ride. :) 
> 
> _In loving memory of Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra, Babylon, Umma and Isin._  
>  May the memory of their greatness long surpass the names of those whose callous disregard led to their destruction.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello fellow fans, it's me, needy author person.  
> :)
> 
> If you liked this chapter, or if you didn't. Or if you liked parts if it and found others meh.
> 
> Please comment!  
> It's like sunshine and oxygen. It turns into words in my brain.  
> I swear!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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